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ESSAYS 
CATHOLIC AND CRITICAL 


en q Oe : 
A heme ‘ie ry 





ESSAYS 
CATHOLIC & CRITICAL 


BY MEMBERS OF 
THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION 





EDI EE DS yi 


EDWARD GORDON SELWYN 


& 


NEW YORK 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 


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PREFACE 


Tue contributors to this volume have been drawn together by a 
common desire to attempt a fresh exposition and defence of the 
Catholic faith. They have nearly all been engaged in University 
teaching during recent years, and have thus been brought into 
close touch with the vigorous currents and cross-currents of 
thought and feeling amid which Christianity has to render its 
own life and truth explicit ; and they have been compelled, both 
for themselves and for others, to think out afresh the content and 
the grounds of their religion. “This book is the result of their 
endeavour. 

Among precursors in the same field, the essayists owe pre- 
eminent acknowledgment to the authors of “ Lux Mundi,” a 
book which exercised upon many of them a formative influence 
and still has a living message. But by two forces especially, both 
of them operating with great intensity, theology has been con- 
strained both to lengthen its cords and to strengthen its stakes 
during the generation which has elapsed since that work was 
first published. On the one hand many thoughtful men have been 
led by the spectacle of a disordered and impoverished Christen- 
dom to a keener discernment of the supernatural element in 
religion, and to a renewed interest in the expressions of it which are 
seen in Catholic unity andauthority, in whatever form these come ; 
so that solidarity has taken its true rank at the side of continuity, 
as a necessary “note”? of the Church. On the other hand, the 
critical movement, which was already in “ Lux Mundi” allowed 
to effect a significant lodgment in the citadel of faith, has continued 
with unabated vigour to analyse and bring to light the origins and 
foundations of the Gospel. As the title of this volume implies, 
it is the writers’ belief that these two movements can be and must 
be brought into synthesis ; and we believe further that, in the 
task of effecting it, in thought, in devotion, and finally in the 
visible achievement of the Church’s unity, the Anglican 


vi Preface 


Communion and its theologians have a part of peculiar import- 
ance to play. 

For the two terms Catholic and critical represent principles, 
habits, and tempers of the religious mind which only reach their 
maturity in combination. ‘To the first belongs everything in us 
that acknowledges and adores the one abiding, transcendent, and 
supremely given Reality, God ; believes in Jesus Christ, as the 
unique revelation in true personal form of His mystery; and 
recognises His Spirit embodied in the Church as the authoritative 
and ever-living witness of His will, word, and work. ‘Yo the 
second belongs the exercise of that divinely implanted gift of 
reason by which we measure, sift, examine, and judge whatever 
is proposed for our belief, whether it be a theological doctrine or 
a statement of historical fact, and so establish, deepen, and purify 
our understanding of the truth of the Gospel. The proportion 
in which these two activities are blended will vary in different 
individuals and in relation to different parts of our subject-matter : 
but there is no point at which they do not interact, and we are 
convinced that this interaction is necessary to any presentment of 
Christianity which is to claim the allegiance of the world to-day. 

The scope and arrangement of the essays call for little 
explanation. ‘The first three essays are concerned with the 
presuppositions of faith—with its rudimentary origins and 
development, with its justification in reason and experience, and 
with the claims of the Catholic Church to provide for it a rational 
basis of authority ; though there is a sense in which no doctrine 
of authority can claim to be more than a kind of torso, so long 
as the divisions of Christendom hinder its concrete expression 
and operation. ‘The second and central section of the book aims 
at unfolding the revelation of God and the redemption of man 
which centre in, and derive from, the Person of Christ, incarnate, 
crucified, and risen; and the historical evidence for these facts 
is considered with some fulness in face of modern criticism. 
‘The concluding section embraces the institutional expression and 
vital application of the redemptive resources of Christianity in the 
Church and the sacraments, particular heed being given to 
certain aspects of these which are much in men’s minds at the 
present time. It will be clear that many problems have had to 
be left untouched ; but some omissions were necessary, if the 
book were not to assume an inconvenient bulk. Our purpose, 


Preface Vil 


however, has not been to be exhaustive, but rather to bear witness 
to the faith we have received and commend it, so far as may be, 
to others. 

‘In a work of this kind the measure of collective responsibility 
is not easy to define. Nor perhaps is it necessary. Domiciled 
as we are in different places, and not all of us even in England, 
we have found it impossible to meet together for discussion. On 
the other hand, each author has seen and been encouraged to 
criticise every essay, and all criticisms have been considered 
before any essay assumed its final form. In some cases care has 
been taken by the use of the first person to show that an expression 
of opinion is markedly the writer’s own. ‘These cases, however, 
though not unimportant, are few ; and while none of the authors 
should be held responsible for more than his own contribution, 
it may be legitimately said that the volume represents a common 
faith, temper, and desire. 


FE. God: 


Eastertide, 1920. 


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CONTENTS 


I 


. THE EMERGENCE OF RELIGION : - 


EDWIN OLIVER JAMES, PH.D., F.S.A., Fellow of the no 
Anthropological Institute, Caer of St. Thomas’, Oxford. 


ies THE VINDICATION OF RELIGION . e 


ALFRED EDWARD TayiLor, M.A., D.LITT., LITT.D., Fellow 
of the British Academy, Professor of Moral Philosophy in 
the University of Edinburgh. 


PeAUTHORITY :.. : : : : 


I. Authority as a Ground of Belief 


ALFRED EDWARD JOHN Rawlinson, D.D., Student and 
Tutor of Christ Church, Oxford, Examining Chaplain to 
the Bishop of Lichfield. 


Il. The Authority of the Church. 


WILFRED L. Knox, M.A., Priest of the Oratory of the Good 
Shepherd, Cambridge. 


ii 


4. ‘THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF GoD : 


LIONEL SPENCER THORNTON, M.A., Priest of the Com- , 


munity of the Resurrection, Mirfield, formerly Scholar o 
Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Theological Tutor and 
Lecturer in the College of the Resurrection. 


5. THE CHRIST OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS 


Sir Epwyn C. Hoskyns, Bart., M.A., M.C., Fellow and 
Dean of Corpus Christi College, Canbades 


6. THE INCARNATION A - { : : 


JoHN KennetTH Moztey, M.A., B.D., Warden of St. 
Augustine’s House, Reading, Lecturer of Leeds Parish 
Church, Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of Oxford. 


PAGE 


29 


121 


PS, 


Contents 


xX 

7. Aspects OF Man’s ConplirTIon 

(a) Sin and the Fall. 
EDWARD JOHN BICKNELL, D.D., Prebendary of Chichester, 
Vice-Principal of Cuddesdon Theological College. 

(6) Grace and Freedom. 
JoHN KENNETH Moz.ey, M.A., B.D. 

8. THe ATONEMENT : : : 
KENNETH E. Kirk, M.A., B.D., Fellow and Lecturer of 
Trinity College, Oxford, Six- ieacher in Canterbury 
Cathedral, Examining Chaplain to the Bishops of Sheffield 
and St. Albans. 

g. HE RESURRECTION : : : : 
EDWARD GorDON SELWYN, M.A., B.D., Editor of Theology, 
Rector of Redhill, Havant, Hon. Chaplain to the Bishop of 
Winchester. 

RET 

10. THE SPIRIT AND THE CHURCH IN HIsTORY 
Eric MILNER-WHITE, M.A., D.S.O., Fellow and Dean of 
King’s College, Cambridge, Priest of the Oratory of the 
Good Shepherd. 

11. THE REFORMATION : : - 
A. HAMILTON THomMPson, M.A., St. John’s College, 
Cambridge, Hon. D.Litt.. Durham, F.S.A., Professor of 
Medieval History in the University of Leeds. 

12. ‘(HE ORIGINS OF THE SACRAMENTS 
NORMAN POWELL WILLIAMS, M.A., Fellow and Precentor 
of Exeter College, Oxford ; Lecturer in Theology at Exeter 
and Pembroke Colleges, Oxford ; Examining Chaplain to 
the Bishop of Newcastle. 

13. THe Eucuarist : : , : 
WILL Spens, M.A., C.B.E., Fellow and Tutor of Corpus 
Christi College, Cambridge. 

INDEX : : ‘ : ‘ 5 : 


PAGE 


203 


247 


cal 


321 


3h3 


367 


425 


44.9 


THE EMERGENCE OF RELIGION 
BY EDWIN OLIVER JAMES 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


I. InrRopucTorY . : : : : : 4 : 3 
II. Lirz, Dzeatu, anp ImMMortTatity In Earty Cutt . : 4 
1. Beliefs in Survival after Death : 4 : 4 

2. Response to the Mystery of Nature and Life : ‘ 8 

3. Ideas of Body and Soul 4 ' ' TL 9 

III. Earty DeveLopMents oF THEISM. é : : FeO 
. The Divine King and Culture-hero . ‘ 2) 

2. The Beneficent Creator . : : 1 aE 


3. Towards Monotheism in Greece and a . aren oh YD 


I 


INTRODUCTORY 


THE progress of scientific research in recent years has not only 
changed our view of the universe, but it has also materially altered 
our conception of human and religious origins. In the old days 
when it was thought that the world was brought into being ina short 
space of time by aseries of special creative acts culminating in man, 
the whole scheme of creation and redemption seemed to fit together 
into one composite whole. Now, for those who are acquainted 
with contemporary thought, religion, like all other attributes of 
the universe, is known to be a product of evolution, inasmuch as 
it has proceeded from simple beginnings to complex conceptions 
of man and his relation to the supernatural order. But since this 
fact was first demonstrated in the latter part of the nineteenth 
century, further evidence has thrown much new light on the early 
history of religion. Nevertheless, anthropology is still a young 
and somewhat speculative science, and it becomes anthropologists 
to be very modest in their assertions. At present we know only 
in part, and with the completion of knowledge (if indeed such 
is attainable) doubtless many of our provisional hypotheses will 
have to be abandoned or at least modified. “Therefore, in venturing 
upon an account of the emergence of religion, it should be made 
clear to the general reader at the outset that we are dealing with 
tentative propositions based upon evidence that is in process of 
accumulation. But provisional formulation according to the data 
available at a given time and the use of the scientific imagination 
are part of the scientific method and not to be despised in the great 
quest of truth. Moreover, it is impossible for a writer who is 
himself engaged in specialised research to be entirely free from 
a mental bias resulting from his own investigations. It is the 
business of the scientist to collect and classify the data at his dis- 
posal and to form judgments upon the basis of this classification, 
but always claiming the right, of course, to adjust his conclusions, 
or, if need be, change them, in the light of new and additional 


4 The Emergence of Religion 


evidence Therefore, while he is concerned primarily with facts, 
he cannot altogether escape from theories. 

It is now becoming clear that the view concerning the origin 
of religion which the late Sir Edward Tylor put forth in 1872 
in his great work, “‘ Primitive Culture,” is too specialised to be 
a ‘‘minimum definition,” as he described it. Religion, he thought, 
originated in animism, a term used to signify a “belief in the 
existence of spiritual beings,’ + that is to say, of “spirits” in 
the wide sense that includes “souls.”” Man is supposed to have 
arrived at this conception by the realisation that within him 
dwells a kind of phantasm or ghost which is capable of leaving 
the body during sleep, trance, or sickness, and finally going away 
altogether at death. ‘This doctrine is thought to have been 
extended to the rest of creation, so that the entire scene of his 
existence was pervaded by these “spiritual beings.” That such a 
view is held to-day by many people living in a primitive state of 
culture is beyond dispute; but does it follow, therefore, that this 
was the case when man first emerged from his mammalian 
forbears ? 


II 
Lire, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY IN EArRLty CULT 
1. Beliefs in Survival after Death 


When we turn from modern native races to the evidence 
revealed by the pick and spade of the archzologist—and after 
all it is this that is of supreme importance, since the savage can 
never be anything but a “modern man,” however arrested his 
development may be—the first indication of religion occurs in 
what. is known as the Middle Palzolithic period (the Old Stone 
Age), when, shivering under the effects of the great Ice Age, 
man was driven to seek shelter and warmth in the caves of France 
and Spain. ‘The inference is based upon the manner of burial 
adopted by the prehistoric race named Neanderthal (after the place 
where the first example of the type was found), which inhabited 
these caves and rock-shelters perhaps a quarter of a million years 
ago. ‘“Lhough brutish-looking fellows, the Neanderthalers not 
only made beautifully worked flint tools, but also laid their dead to 

1 Primitive Culture (London, 1891), 3rd ed., i. 424. 


Life, Death, and Immortality 5 


rest with great care and ceremony. “Thus at Le Moustier the 
skeleton of a youth about sixteen years of age was found carefully 
placed in the attitude of sleep, with the right forearm under the 
head. <A bed of flint chips formed his pillow, and close by the 
hand was a splendid implement. Other flints of the pattern 
characteristic of this period were discovered in the grave, together 
with the bones of the wild ox. Since the latter were charred and 
split, it is generally thought that they were the relics of a funeral 
feast. Similar ceremonial burials have been found elsewhere, 
notably at La Chapelle-aux-Saints.? 

‘These interments prove beyond doubt that Neanderthal man 
had some conception of a life after death. Professor Macalister, 
in his recent “’Text-Book of European Archzology,” has summed 
up the situation by saying that Neanderthal man, degenerate 
though he may have been, ‘‘ was conscious of something more 
than merely animal within him: already he had begun to look 
forward to a life beyond the grave—a life like that to which he was 
accustomed, for he could conceive of none other, where he would 
need food and clothing, and the instruments for procuring them. 
As his comrades passed, each in his turn, into the silent land, he 
laid beside their bodies such things as he imagined would minister 
to their necessities in the mysterious otherworld.” ? 

Neanderthal man, however, does not represent the earliest 
stages of human development. At least one example of a much 
older and probably far superior type of man has been found, taking 
us back to a very remote period, before the Ice Age, perhaps 
half a million yearsago. ‘This remarkable discovery was made in 
IQI2 in a narrow Stratum of river-gravel on Piltdown Common, 
near Uckfield, in Sussex. Although the precise date of the skull 
is a matter of dispute among scholars, all are agreed that the lady 
of Piltdown—for the skeleton was apparently that of a woman— 
is the oldest inhabitant of Great Britain, if not of the world, so 
far discovered. Contemporary with, or perhaps rather earlier 
than, Eoanthropus, as the Piltdown woman is called, “ a being 
human in stature, human in gait, human in all its parts, save its 
- brain,” and therefore named Pithecanthropus erectus (the ape-man 

1 Arch. fiir Anthrop. (1909), vil. 287 ff.; L’ Anthropologie (1913), xxiv., 
fet H. Obermaier, Fossil Man in Spain (New Haven, 1924), pp. 95 ff., 
232 ff. 


2 (Cambridge, 1921), p. 343- 
3 Quart. Fournal Geol. Soc., March 1913, Xix. 117. 


6 The Emergence of Religion 


who stands erect), was found in Java in 1894.1 While some 
authorities regard the Javan fossil as the most primitive member of 
the human family, others think that it is most satisfactorily ex- 
plained as a degeneration on lines of its own. ‘The size of a 
man’s head, of course, is no precise criterion of his intellectual 
powers, but nevertheless a brain must reach a certain weight— 
950 grammes, or 1000 cubic centimetres in volume—before it 
can become the seat of human intelligence. Pzthecanthropus, with 
a cranial capacity of 850 cubic centimetres, is therefore well 
below the human level, whereas his contemporary (or successor) 
in Sussex had a thoroughly human-shaped skull with a large 
capacity variously estimated at from 1100 to 1397 cubic centi- 
metres, and resembling in many ways the head-form of modern 
man. Moreover, as Professor Keith has shown, the front part of 
the brain—the pre-frontal region, as it is called—with which all 
the higher mental faculties are associated, was well developed. 
This suggests that the ancient lady was a person of some intelli- 
gence, infinitely superior intellectually either to Pzthecanthropus 
or to Neanderthal man.2 Therefore, if the Cave people had some 
conception of religion, although we have no direct evidence that 
the same is true of the earlier Piltdown race, yet there is certainly 
no adequate reason to deny it. On the contrary, if we are com- 
pelled to grant a religious sense to Neanderthal man, it would 
be illogical to suppose that his intellectually superior predecessor 
was inferior in this respect. It is, therefore, not improbable, if 
the Piltdown remains are at all typical of the earliest human 
beings, that religion emerged at a very early period in the history 
of mankind. 

Can we go a step further, and determine the nature of the 
earliest strivings after things unseen? With regard to the theo- 
logical doctrine of a primitive revelation and a state of original 
righteousness having at one time prevailed, the anthropological 
evidence, of course, is silent, the question being one for the 
theologian to decide and not for the scientist. Since we are here 
concerned primarily with the scientific evidence, suffice it to say 
that there is no prima facie reason for rejecting the possibility 


1 Keith, Antiquity of Man (London, 1916), pp. 257 ff. 
2 The pre-frontal region of Neanderthal man is by no means fully 


developed, and has a protuberance as in the brain of the anthropoid apes. 
Cf, Elliot Smith, Evolution of Man (Oxford, 1924), p. 41. 


Life, Death, and Immortality y 


of a primitive revelation having been vouchsafed to man, since 
a person with a head like that of the Piltdown woman would not 
have been incapable of conscious communion with the Deity, but 
on the other hand there is nothing in the available evidence to 
suggest this having occurred. Again, there is no innate tendency 
in man to be progressive, and apparently degeneration mani- 
fested itself in prehistoric times in the Cave period. “These facts 
are certainly not inconsistent with the view that man started his 
career in a higher state than that in which he is to-day known to 
the archeologist. But, so far as the anthropological evidence is 
concerned, nothing is known of religion, if it existed, before the 
middle of the Palzolithic period, when the Neanderthal folk 
apparently asked the eternal question, “‘ If a man die shall he live 
again?” 

To the primitive mind death doubtless appeared as a sleep that 
knows no waking, and therefore the Cave men laid their dead 
in a position of rest surrounded by implements, shells,? etc.,in the 
belief that the grave was not the ultimate and absolute end of 
human existence. It is scarcely likely that his eschatological 
speculations went beyond this, though it has been suggested that 
burial in the contracted position had reference to the idea of 
rebirth—a conclusion presupposing a degree of anatomical and 
embryological knowledge, to say nothing of mystical interpretation, 
which early man could hardly have possessed. “There is reason 
to think, however, that he may have been led by his observa- 
tions as a hunter to associate the heart with the centre of vitality, 
since this organ figures prominently in some of the hunting 
scenes depicted on the walls of the later Palzolithic caves in France 
and Spain.? Life and death were facts of experience, and the 
obvious inference to be drawn from a dead body is that something 
has left it. Moreover, hunters would know that loss of blood 
produced loss of vitality, faintness, and death. It would there- 
fore not require much speculation to associate the blood with the 
life ; and their experience in the chase again would lead them to 
the knowledge that the heart was the vital spot, as is proved by the 

1 Cf. Elliot Smith, op. czt., p. 118. 

2 It is possible that these shells were used as amulets to give life to the dead. 
Cf. J. W. Jackson, Shells as Evidence of the Migration of Early Culture 
(Manchester, 1917), pp. 135 ff. 


3 E. A. Parkyn, Prehistoric Art (London, 1915), pp. 89, 107 ff. 3 Sollas 
Ancient Hunters, 2nd ed. (London, 1915), pp. 326, 333, 361. 


8 The Emergence of Religion 


Paleolithic drawings of animals in which this organ is represented 
with arrows in it.+ 

This belief in the blood as the vitalising essence doubtless led to 
the heart being regarded as the seat of the vital principle, and the 
blood as a vital fluid. Thus arose also the practice of painting 
the bones of the dead red, as in the case of the skeleton found 
in a Paleolithic cave at Paviland in Wales,? and in the later 
kurgans or Neolithic (New Stone Age) and Bronze Age tumuli 
of Russia.2 ‘The purpose of the rite is clear, for, as Macalister 
says, ‘red is the colour of living health. The dead man was to 
live again in his own body, of which the bones were the frame- 
work. ‘To paint it with the colour of life was the nearest thing 
to mummification that the Palzolithic people knew ; it was an 
attempt to make the body again serviceable for its owner’s use.’’* 


2. Response to the Mystery of Nature and Life 


Although it is not in the least likely that the primitive mind 
was concerned with problems of theology, yet it is not unreasonable 
to surmise, that when the knowledge of natural law was so limited, 
the overpowering awesomeness of Nature found a religious expres- 
sion at a very early period. As the lightning shivered the trees, 
and the thunder crashed amid torrential rains, the cave-dwellers 
may have felt themselves in the presence of a Power that they did 
not understand, and which therefore terrified and mystified them. 
In all ages the sense of wonder in the presence of Nature has 
been one of the primary impulses of religion, and it may well be 
that it played a prominent part in the earliest stages of religious 
evolution. ‘Thus Otto says, “‘all ostensible explanations of the 
origin of religion in terms of animism or magic or folk psychology 
are doomed from the outset to wander astray and miss the real 
goal of their inquiry, unless they recognise this fact of our nature— 
primary, unique, underivable from anything else—to be the basic 
factor and the basic impulse underlying the entire process of 
religious evolution.” ® ‘This is more or less the view put forth 
by Marett. In his opinion, religion manifested itself on its 
emotional side when ideation was vague, as an attitude of mind 

tap ced, 2 Fourn. Anthrop. Institute, xlvili. (1913), p. 325. 
3K. Russ. Arch. Gesellschaft, xi. 1. 


4 Text-book of Europ. Archeol., p. 502. 
5 The Idea of the Holy (Oxford, 1923), p. 15. 


Life, Death, and Immortality 9 


dictated by awe of the mysterious, which provided religion with 
its raw material apart from animism. ‘This “‘ pre-animistic ” 
phase at the threshold of religion he terms animatism, and connects 
it with a mystic impersonal force, called by the Melanesians mana, 
which “ works to effect everything which is beyond the power of 
men, outside the common process of nature.”’? It should be 
remembered, however, that while mana is largely impersonal in 
the Banks and Torres Islands, elsewhere in the Pacific its ultimate 
source is personal beings, and is “‘ out and out spiritualistic.”’ 3 

Nevertheless, apart from the precise significance of the 
Melanesian conception of mana, it would seem that something 
akin to the idea of “‘ power” at a very early period was attached 
to objects that showed signs of “activity,” life and mystery— 
“a primal numinous awe’ 4—which may represent “the 
beginning of the notion, however vague, of a transcendent Some- 
thing, a real operative entity of a numinous kind, which later, 
as the development proceeds, assumes concrete form as a ‘ numen 
loci,’ a demon, an ’EI, a Baal, or the like.’ 5 It is this which 
lies behind the notion of “sacredness,” tabu, and worship, pro- 
ducing that attitude of mind which finds expression in the cry, 
“How dreadful is this place !”? ‘Thus the concept of the eerie 
and awful passes into that of the “numen,” a divine power 
_ associated with an object or place. ‘‘ This is none other than the 
house of Elohim.” On this hypothesis, the religious attitude of 
early man may not have been far removed from that of the author 
of the 29th Psalm to whom the thunderstorm that passed over 
the country was a revelation of God. 

But if Neanderthal man felt himself in the presence of 
powers that mystified and terrified him, his successors the 
Aurignacians, as they are called, sought their god in the mysterious 
life-giving power that appears to animate Nature. “The two great 
interests of primitive people everywhere and at all times are food 
and children. ‘‘’To live and to cause to live, to eat food and 
to beget children, these were the primary wants of man in the 
past, and they will be the primary wants of man in the future so 

1 Threshold of Religion (London, 1914), pp. 3 ff. 

* Codrington, The Melanesians (Oxford, 1891), pp. 119 ff. 

3 Hocart, Man (1914), p. 46. 

4 Otto coins the word ‘‘ numinous”’ to express the apprehension of super- 


natural power producing the idea of non-moral holiness. 
5 Idea of the Holy, p. 130. 


IO The Emergence of Religion 


long as the world lasts.”1 ‘They have been described as the 
foundation-stones of magic and religion,? and as early as the 
Aurignacian culture phase, Palzolithic man made female figures 
with the maternal organs grossly emphasised, identical with the 
statues found in Crete, the Aigean, Malta, Egypt and Western 
Asia, known to have been associated with the cult of the Mother 
Goddess.2 To the Aurignacians the Great Mother may have 
been little more than a life-giving amulet—the “push of life” 
from within and the struggle for existence from without directing 
the religious impulse to the conservation and promotion of life 
by magical devices. But as life-giving amulets developed, the 
‘“‘numinous consciousness” was doubtless stirred, and gradually 
there arose the conception of the Great Mother, the giver of life 
and health. Elliot Smith thinks that “‘ this Great Mother, at 
first with only vaguely defined traits, was probably the first deity 
that the wit of man devised to console him with her watchful care 
over his welfare in this life, and to give him assurance as to his 
fate in the future.” * ‘This perhaps is true, inasmuch as the 
religious sense in man was awakened largely through the practical 
problems of life and death calling forth the ‘‘ numinous quality ” 
of religious awe. Ideas invariably originate not in speculation 
but in facts, and in the case of religions, it would seem that God 
led man on to a knowledge of Himself chiefly through natural 
means. Nature proved a stern school in early days, and when 
man reached the end of his ordinary practical and emotional 
tether, he became conscious of his own limitations and of the 
vastness and mysteriousness of the world. “Thus the fear of 
Nature led him to the fear of the Lord, just as to-day the religious 
impulse is stimulated when a person reaches the limit of his own 
resources. While, on the one hand, this may have led him to 
the notion of a “transcendent Something”’ akin to an external 
Creator, a real operative entity of a numinous kind, a personifica- 
tion of the concept of mana; onthe other, the purely practical side, 
it is not improbable that the Great Mother represents the earliest 
expression of the creative principle in terms of deity, and therefore 
she may be the first concrete deity the wit of man devised. Be 


1 Golden Bough, 3rd ed., pt. iv. (““Adonis, etc,” I.), p. 

2 J. Harrison, £ pileeomena to the Study of Greek Religion CAnb Ren 1921), 
ia 

3 Déchelette, Manuel d’archéologie (Paris, 1908), pp. 217, 428 ff., 584, 594. 

4 Evolution of the Dragon (Manchester, 1919), pp. 151, 143, 150. 


Life, Death, and Immortality II 


this as it may, there can be little doubt that it was through the 
practical problems of life, coupled with an emotional attitude 
towards natural phenomena, that man was first made to seek 


God and feel after Him if haply he might find Him. 


3. Ideas of Body and Soul 


From these simple beginnings the history of religion pursues an 
even course for thousands of years along the lines indicated above 
until revolutionary and far-reaching changes appear in the Eastern 
Mediterranean about the middle of the fourth millennium B.c. 
In Mesopotamia the existence of a Sumerian civilisation has been 
revealed preceding the first Semitic kingdom founded in that region 
by Sargon of Akkad (c. 2800 B.c.), while at Anau in Russian 
Turkestan, and at Susa in Elam, the remains of an early copper 
culture occur having affinities with the 6th ‘‘city” at Hissarlik 
(Troy).1 In the A‘gean, the ancient civilisation of Crete has been 
divided into an early, middle, and late Minoan age, each in its 
turn split up into three sub-periods. Evans places the beginning 
of the Minoan age at 3400 B.c., and considers that the Neolithic 
deposits in Crete probably go back to 8000 B.c.? In Egypt the 
Dynastic period begins about the same time (3400 B.c.), and it 
has lying behind it a pre-Dynastic period, certainly going back to 
8000 B.c., divided into early, middle, and late, according to the 
age of the graves found in prehistoric cemeteries scattered over 
Egypt and Nubia. Thus the close of the Palzolithic age in 
Europe serves as the pedestal for the beginning of the history 
of the oldest civilisations, 

While the majority of scholars look to Babylonia for the 
cradle land of civilisation, Elliot Smith argues in favour of the 
original broadcasting of culture from the Nile Valley.4 “The 
discovery that the bodies of the dead were desiccated by natural 
forces as a result of their having been deposited in the hot desert 
sand, turned the thoughts of the pre-dynastic Egyptians, he thinks, 
to the preservation of the body to eternal life. Around the 


1 R. Pumpelly, Explorations in Turkestan (Washington, 1908); De Morgan, 
Délégation en Perse, Mémoires xiii. ; Prehistoric Man (London, 1924), pp. 105, 
208 ff.; H. Frankfort, Royal Anthrop. Inst. Occas. Papers, No. 6, 1924, pp. 78 ff. 

2 Palace of Minos (London, 1921), i. 25, 35. 

3 Petrie, Fournal Anthrop. Institute, xxix. 295. 

4 Ancient Egyptians (London, 1923). 


12 The Emergence of Religion 


practice of mummification there grew up, on this hypothesis, the 
complex system of ritual and belief which contributed to a con- 
siderable degree to the wonderful civilisation that subsequently 
developed in Egypt and Western Asia and finally spread through- 
out the world! Apart from this theory of the initiative of Egypt 
in the creation of civilisation, it is beyond dispute that in the Nile 
Valley at the beginning of the Dynastic period there arose a com- 
plex idea of immortality centred in the literal restoration to life 
of the dead body.2 Having freed themselves from the precarious 
and absorbing life of the chase by the discovery of agriculture, 
men turned their attention to the problem of the essential nature 
and destiny of man. ‘The notion of a vital principle in the body 
was elaborated in the doctrine of the a or guardian genius, which 
was born with the man, and resided in his body during the whole 
of his terrestrial life except when it went on a journey during 
sleep. It gave all the attributes of life to the human organism, 
but the actual personality consisted of the visible body and the 
invisible intelligence (kw), which was situated in the heart (ab) or 
abdomen. ‘The breath, as distinct from the intelligence, was the 
actual vital essence, and after the ‘I’welfth Dynasty the two were 
symbolised by the 4a, or human-headed bird with human arms, 
hovering over the mummy, extending to its nostrils in the one 
hand the figure of a swelling sail, the hieroglyph for wind or 
breath, and in the other the crux ansata, or symbol of life.2 “The 
ba was the disembodied soul or ghost which came into existence 
for the first time at death. It was represented as flying down 
the tomb-shaft to the mummy in the chamber below, and wan- 
dering about the cemetery. The da was therefore connected 
with the mummy (saAu), just as the ka was associated with the 
khat or body. “The ka was said to go to Osiris, the god of the 
dead, or to the boat of the Sun, or to the company of the gods 
who gave it, and it was separated from its protégé by more than 
the mere distance of the cemetery, for in one passage in the 
Pyramid ‘Texts the deceased “‘ goes to his ka, to the sky.” 4 It 
was always the protecting genius, and seems to have combined the 
function of a guardian spirit and an animating essence. But it 
was always distinct from the conception of the soul (z.e. the ghost) 


1 Proc. Royal Philos. Soc. (Glasgow, 1910), xli. pp. 59 ff. 

2 Breasted, Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt (London, 
1912), p. 56. 

3 Breasted, op. cit., 52 ff. © OD SCitAy Dak st 


Life, Death, and Immortality 13 


as expressed in the doctrine of the da. ‘To ensure physical 
restoration to the dead the personality had to be reconstituted, and 
if the corpse was to be resuscitated, the missing “substance” or 
vitality must be restored. ‘To this end elaborate ceremonies were 
devised which aimed at reconstituting the individual by processes 
external to him, under the control of the survivors and the 
mortuary priest. First the body had to be resuscitated, and the 
faculties were restored one by one, till at length the deceased 
became a “living soul” (4a), in which capacity he again existed 
as a person, possessing all the powers that would enable him to 
survive hereafter. A human being therefore did not become a 
ba merely by dying, but through the renewal of his vitality and 
personality. First the tissues of the physical body had to be 
preserved, and the individual features and natural form main- 
tained so far as possible in the mummy itself. “Then it had to 
be animated. But the technical difficulties in the way of making 
the mummy the simulacrum of the deceased were so great that, 
notwithstanding the measure of success achieved by the Egyptians 
of the Pyramid Age, the practice was never wholly successful, and 
the custom of making images of the dead in stone and wood and 
transferring the 4a to them was adopted at an early period. “These 
portrait statues seem to have been regarded not merely as abodes 
or vehicles of the life of the deceased, but as the man himself 
in his entire nature—that is to say, they were in all respects 
identical with the resuscitated mummy. ‘Thus the sculptor was 
called ‘‘ he who makes to live” (s’zh), and the ceremony of the 
animation of the statue—‘“‘ opening the mouth,” as it was termed— 
was looked upon as a creative act.1. In Mexico and elsewhere 
images of the dead were brought into physical contact with the 
actual body, or a life-giving substance, to transform them into live 
men. Either the ashes of the cremated remains were transferred 
to the effigy, or blood (identified with the life) of human or animal 
victims was smeared upon them, a practice that very probably 
represents the beginning of sacrifice.” 

This transference of the life of man to his portrait statue 
or effigy tended, however, to magnify the importance of the vital 
principle at the expense of the body ; and although the Egyptians 

1 Breasted, op. cit., pp. 52 ff.; A. H. Gardner, Encycl. Rel. and Ethics, 
Mies Oviedo, Historia General de las Indias (Madrid, 1855), iv. 48 ff. Cf. 
American Anthropologist (1914), p- 61. 


14 The Emergence of Religion 


never dissociated a person from the body, elsewhere the external 
embodiment—be it either the mortal remains or their surrogate— 
gradually lost its significance in the process of securing im- 
mortality for the soul. In Egypt, however, since the con- 
ception of the continuation of life beyond the grave was 
bound up with the imperishability of the body, cremation was 
never adopted. Nevertheless, as will be explained later, from 
the Fifth Dynasty onwards the Pharaohs began to turn their 
gaze skywards as the solar theology became predominant. In 
consequence the ritual of mummification gradually became celes- 
tialised, the mummy eventually being conveyed to the sky by 
Hathor, the divine cow, and other vehicles. 

The Egyptian conception of the soul, while in many respects 
clearly an extension of the prehistoric notion of the indwelling 
vital principle concentrated in certain parts or attributes of the 
body, is a very specialised doctrine, in which all the various theories 
found elsewhere are contained. ‘Thus in many parts of the 
world—e.g. Indonesia, China, New Guinea, the Pacific, North 
America, etc.—the belief that man has two souls is widespread.! 
The life or vital principle is invariably (but not always) distin- 
guished from the kind of double of the deceased (the ghost) that 
came into existence at the moment of death as a new and in- 
dependent entity. Even when the life was thought to become 
the ghost instead of returning to the sky whence it proceeded, 
it took over a rather different guise after death. 

In Babylonia the spiritual double corresponding to the Egyptian 
ka was designated the Zz or “ life,” and was symbolised in the 
cuneiform script by a flowering plant. It was the Zz that made 
man a living soul in this world, and beyond the grave it continued 
to represent his personality. But in addition to this at death man 
became an edimmu or lila, 1.e.a ghost.2 “he body was not essential 
to the attainment of immortality, as no attempt was made to 
preserve it, and cremation seems to have been practised in certain 
parts of Sumer and Akkad from very early times.? In the 
/¥gean, on the other hand, great care was taken in the disposal of 


the body. “The kings of Knossos and Mycenz were buried in 


1 Encycl. Rel. and Ethics, vii. 233 ff.; De Groot, The Religious System of 
China, iv. bk. i1. (Leiden, 1901), pp. 3, 57, 3963; Folk-lore, xxxi.(1920), pp. 53 ff. 
2 Sayce, Religion of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia (ed. 1903), pp. 276 ff. 
Koldeway, Zeitschrift fiir Assyriologie, ii. (1887), pp. 403 ff. 


Life, Death, and Immortality 15 


elaborately furnished, chambered and domed tombs,! and although 
the dwellings of the dead passed through many changes of form 
during the Minoan age, they all agreed in testifying that soul and 
body were not dissociated, till, in the Homeric period, there arose 
a new conception of the soul as the last breath distinct from the 
vital principle. While relics of preservation of the body remained 
in the preparation of the corpse immediately after death, cremation 
was adopted as the means of freeing the soul from its fleshly 
entanglement.? “lhe doctrine of transmigration added later by 
the Orphics to the Dionysiac cult, and taught by Pythagoras, 
developed this conception of the soul as an immaterial entity. 
Thus in the great religions of antiquity in the Near East we 
can observe the gradual dissociation of body and soul, which, 
outside Egypt, found expression in such practices as cremation, 
and possibly in the doctrine of reincarnation and transmigration. 
From crude notions concerning the revivification of the physical 
body with all its attributes, there arose apparently a belief in the 
life of the spirit as a new entity carrying on the life of the individual 
either in another body or in the disembodied state, but independent 
of the mortal remains. Moreover, the same tendency may be 
observed in the phenomena of nature as in man. ‘The whole 
_ universe, according to primitive philosophy, belongs to one great 
system of interrelated and inherent life—probably the unconscious 
expression of the religious emotion itself. But as the individual 
object becomes associated with the religious emotion it takes on 
an individuality of its own, and the inherent vitality becomes more 
and more specialised and independent of its external embodiment. 
By some such process as this the belief in spiritual beings, phantasms, 
and all that is comprised by the term animism, used in its Tylorian 
sense, may have arisen. ‘Thus in North America, the Iroquois 
of the Eastern States suppose that in every object there is an 
inherent power called orenda, analogous to will and intelligence 
rather than to purely mechanical force. ‘This is the equivalent 
of the Melanesian concept of mana. On the Plains to the west 
of the Iroquois, the Omaha address prayers and ascribe certain 
anthropomorphic attributes to a kind of vital essence called wakonda 


1 A.Evans, Prehistoric Tombs of Knossos (London, 1906), p. § ; cf. Journal of 
Hellenic Studies, xxii. 3933 of Ridgeway, Early Age of Greece (Camb. my LQOT)s 1.7. 

2 Iliad, xxii. 151, Xiii. 763, xviii. 345 ff., 315 ff., xxiii. 106. 

3 Hewitt, Handbook of Amer. Indians (Washington, 1907-10), il. 147. 


16 The Emergence of Religion 


(“the power that moves”’?).1_ It would seem that here we have 
the impersonal energy on its way to becoming a separate spiritual 
being with a cult of its own. ‘To the north, the Eastern 
Algonquins apply the term manitu to any spirit or genius /oct, 
but these spirits were not necessarily definite in shape. An arrow, 
for example, was manitu because a spirit had either transformed 
itself into the arrow, or dwelt in it.? 


III 


EarLty DEVELOPMENTS OF [HEISM 
1. The Divine King and Culture-hero 


Once the doctrine of spirits became established their form and 
number were limitless. “They appeared as human beings, animals, 
‘‘ mythological ” creatures, rocks, trees, phantasies, etc., according 
to the predominance of the image in the mind of the individual. 
Some spirits were indeterminate in shape because the object with 
which they were associated had no definite form, as in the case of 
such spirits as wind, fire, water, etc. As spirits of definitely 
circumscribed type developed, one of the first and most natural 
reactions seems to have been that the people elevated to the super- 
natural order those chiefs and heroes so dear to the popular mind. 
Thus Seligman has shown that the Shilluk of the White Nile 
reverence their king because they regard him as a reincarnation 
of the spirit of Nyakang, the semi-divine hero who founded the 
Dynasty and settled the tribe in their present territory. The 
pedigree of the kings from Nyakang to the present day has been 
preserved. “These monarchs number twenty, distributed over 
twelve generations, though probably many more have reigned.3 
The natives think of Nyakang as having been a real man in appear- 
ance and physical qualities, though, unlike his royal descendants 
of more recent times, he did not die but simply disappeared. His 
holiness is manifested especially by his relation to Juok, the 
Supreme Creator of the Shilluk who sends down rain at the inter- 
cession of Nyakang. ‘The latter appears to have been a real man 
who led the tribe to their present home on the Nile, and he is 
therefore regarded by Frazer as the modern counterpart of the 


1 27th Report Bureau Amer. Ethnol. (1911), pp. 134, 597. 

2 Fournal Amer. Folk-lore, xxvii. (1914), pp. 349 f. 

3 Cult of Nyakang and the Divine Kings of the Shilluk (Khartoum, 1911), 
pp. 216 ff. 


Early Developments of Theism 17 


ancient Egyptian Osiris whom Elliot Smith describes as “the 
prototype of all gods.” 1 

The origin of Osiris is still a matter of controversy. Petrie 
thinks that he was a civilising king of Egypt who was murdered 
by his brother Set and seventy-two conspirators? and Frazer 
concludes that “‘ though in the main a god of vegetation and of the 
dead,” originally Osiris was a real man who “ by his personal 
qualities excited a larger measure of devotion than usual during 
his life and was remembered with fond affection and deeper 
reverence after his death; till in time his beloved memory, 
dimmed, transfigured, and encircled with a halo of glory by the 
mists of time, grew into the dominant religion of his people.” 3 
_ Further he suggests the possibility “ that Osiris was no other than 
the historical king Khent of the First Dynasty, that the skull found 
in the tomb is the skull of Osiris himself.” 4 But what Frazer 
fails to show is how Osiris the divine king and Osiris the vegetation 
god are to be reconciled. 

An examination of the early Texts reveals scanty evidence of 
Osiris as the source of all vegetable life, for in the Old Kingdom it 
is his royal character that is emphasised, especially in the sculptures 
and hieroglyphs. Furthermore, “it is always as a dead king 
that he appears, the réle of the living king being invariably played 
by Horus, his son and heir.” 5 Thus in the Sed festival, which 
appears to have been normally celebrated every thirty years, and 
is usually supposed to have been on the occasion of the king being 
deified as Osiris,® Gardiner has given reasons for believing that the 
king there played the part of Horus and not of Osiris, and that 
“it is only in death that the monarch’s transformation from Horus 
to Osiris was effected,’ 7 on the twenty-fifth day of the fourth 
month during the embalmment ceremonies. In this case a com-= 
plete identity existed between the king and the gods both in life 
and after death. 


* Golden Bough, pt. iv. (‘* Adonis,” etc., II.), pp. 160 ff.; Elliot Smith, 
Evolution of the Dragon, p.32. While it cannot be maintained, as the philosopher 
Euhemeros supposed, that all myths are of historical origin, and all gods 
merely deified men, it is nevertheless true that historical facts have been pre- 
served in tribal traditions, and some culture-heroes have been deified after death, 

* Religion of Ancient Egypt (London, 1906), pp. 38 f. 

° Golden Bough, op cit., p. 160. f ORNs Dil Oot 

* fournal of Egyptian Archaeology, ii. (191), p. 122. 

® Petrie, Researches in Sinai (London, 1906), purse. 

* Journal Egypt. Archeol., op. cit., p. 124. 


18 The Emergence of Religion 


Nevertheless, that Osiris was connected with vegetation is 
shown by the unmistakable relation which exists between the dates 
of the Osirian festivals and the seasons of the agricultural year. 
The representation of a king on a very early mace using a hoe 
to inaugurate the making of an irrigation canal} has led Elliot 
Smith to conclude that there was a close connection between the 
earliest kings and irrigation. Civilisation, he thinks, began when 
the Egyptians first devised methods of agriculture and invented 
asystem of irrigation. ‘The irrigation engineer, on this hypothesis, 
became the ruler of the whole community—the king—whose 
beneficence was apotheosised after his death, so that he became the 
god Osiris, who was identified with the river, the life-giving 
powers of which he controlled. Thus he was at once a dead 
king and connected with agriculture, and regarded as the controller 
of life-giving powers to the dead as well as to the living. But as 
the originator of civilisation he was also, it is claimed, the prototype 
of all gods ; “his ritual was the basis of all religious ceremonial ; 
his priests who conducted the animating ceremonies were the 
pioneers of a long series of ministers who for more than fifty cen- 
turies, in spite of endless variety of details of their ritual and the 
character of their temples, have continued to perform ceremonies 
that have undergone remarkably little essential change.” 8 

On this hypothesis the creative function of sky-gods is ex- 
plained as the result of the deification of the Sun in the Fifth 
Dynasty when the king regarded himself as the physical son of 
Re, the Sun-god. Henceforth every Pharaoh ascended to the sky 
at death, and all life-giving powers were attributed to the sky- 
gods. “The Sun was the source of life to the earth, and the realm 
whence life proceeded and whither it returned. ‘Thus the Sun 
and the sky-beings came to be regarded as Creators.4 It is un- 
doubtedly true that in the Pyramid texts and funerary literature in 
Egypt the sky-god is represented as the source of life and death, of 
rain and heavenly fire. Among his names that of Horu (sym- 
bolised by the hawk) has given rise to the so-called “ hawk names ”’ 
which appear among the most ancient forms of royal names— 
those of the Thinite period of the First and Second Dynasties. 
‘These show, when set in order, that the king was regarded as an 


1 Quibell, Hierakonpolis (London, 1900), i. pl. xxvi. chap. 4. Cf. p. 9. 
2 Evolution of the Dragon, pp. 29 f. SOp sci, peqa 
4 W. J. Perry, The Children of the Sun (London, 1923), pp. 201 ff., 440 ff. 


Early Developments of Theism 19g 


emanation upon the earth of the Supreme Being. ‘Thus in Egypt 
the conception of the monarch appears to have been based solely 
upon the assimilation of the king to the gods. But did the notion 
of a heavenly Creator arise as the result of the elaboration of the 
Sun-cult in the valley of the Nile at the beginning of the Dynastic 
period ? 

The gods associated with creation in Egyptian theology are 
many. ‘The genesis of the sun (Re) is variously attributed to Seb 
and Nuit, the First Dynasty sky-goddess who produced the earth, 
and gave the king the name of “‘ Son of Nuit.” This prepared the 
way for the assimilation of the king to Re and Osiris, according 
as these successive theologies connected these deities with Nuit. 
The Sun-god therefore was not the first sky deity to be assigned 
creative functions, and the conception of an externa! Supreme 
Creator is probably independent in or'gin of that of the divine 
culture-hero, the fuson of the two cults having been effected 
perhaps from the king being regarded as either the incarnation or 
the son of the Creator. Thus in Babylonia the Sumerian city- 
kings claimed to have been begotten by the gods and born of the 
goddesses, but they were not deified,! while in Greece the Homeric 
king was descended from gods (diotrephes) and had supernatural 
_powers.? It is even possible that such phrases as “‘ the Spirit of the 
Lord came upon him,” used of Othniel, Jephthah, and Samson 
(Jud. iii. 10, xi. 29, xili. 25) may have had originally a similar 
significance. The story of the birth of Samson is singularly like 
that of the birth of the solar deity Mithra,’ and, as in the case of 
the other judges, he was certainly a vicar of God. 


2. The Beneficent Creator 


It would seem, then, that the divinity of kings was intimately 
related with the early developments of theism, and one of the 
germs of monotheism may lie in this doctrine of divine kingship. 
If Osiris was the first king of Egypt, and if the Dynastic period 
in the Nile Valley predated the rise of other ancient monarchies, 
he may be regarded as a prototype of the gods who began life as 


1 Langdon, The Museum Fournal, viii. (Philadelphia, 1917), p. 166. 

* Golden Bough, 3rd ed., pt.i. p. 366. Cf. Hocart, Man, xxv. (February 2, 
1925), pp. 31 f. Cf. Od. iv. 692; ii. 409; xix. 109-114. IJ. ii. 335; xvii. 464. 

* Cumont, Mysteries of Mithra (1913), pp. 124, 130. 


20 The Emergence of Religion 


chiefs, kings, or popular heroes. “Thus may be explained the 
striking resemblances between Nyakang and Osiris. Both died 
violent deaths, the graves of both were pointed out in various parts 
of the country; both were deemed great sources of fertility, and 
both were associated with certain sacred trees and animals, especially 
with bulls. Moreover, just as Egyptian kings identified them- 
selves both in life and death with Osiris, so Shilluk kings are still 
believed to be animated by the spirit of Nyakang and to share his 
divinity. But behind the figure of Nyakang there stands the 
shadowy form of the High God Juok, and although his worship has 
been eclipsed by that of the divine king and ancestor, yet he remains 
the Creator and Supreme God. 

This is typical of the All-Father belief among primitive people. 
Beside the culture-hero there is the Creator, beneficent and 
ethical, who dwells in the heavens in dignified seclusion from the 
affairs of man. ‘The Uitoto of Colombia, South America, for 
example, in addition to the deified ancestors, recognise Nainema, 
“ He-who-is-appearance only,” as the Creator,! while among the 
Dakota in North America the Supreme Deity is comprehended 
as Wakan Tanka, the Great Mystery, made up of four eternal 
essences to be regarded as one—the Chief God, the Great Spirit, 
the Creator, and the Executive.2 In Australia the All-Fathers 
seem to be a combination of deified culture-heroes and beneficent 
Creators, since they are usually regarded as highly ethical gods who 
have had their abode on earth like Osiris, and retired to their 
present abode in the sky, whence they sent down “everything that 
the blackfellow has.” % ‘Therefore primitive monotheism is 
apparently a dual concept, one aspect of which is based on a custom 
which may be traced as far back as early Egypt and Sumer—the 
custom of worshipping kings in their own name—the other, the 
notion of the beneficent Creator, going back probably to a much 
earlier period of religious development. 

In the determination of the evolution of theism it is important 
to remember the part played by these two concepts in the origin 
of the idea of God. It has often been suggested that ethical 

1K. T. Preuss, Rel. und Mythologie der Uitoto, i. 166 ff. 

ae R. Walker, Anthrop. Papers Mus. Nat. Hist., vol. xvi. pt. ii. pp. 78 ff., 
I52 i. 

: ® Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia (London, 1904), 


pp. 498 ff.; Howitt, Native Tribes of S.E. Australia (London, 1904), p. 488 ; 
A. Lang, Making of Religion (London, 1898), pp. 187 ff. 


Early Developments of Theism a 


monotheism is the result of successive transformations of some 
particular deity or lesser being. Thus while the religion of the 
Semites consisted of a complex system of polytheism and 
dzmonism,! there arose in Babylonia about 2000 B.c. a tendency 
towards henotheistic monolatry (belief in and worship of one God 
together with the recognition of other gods and spirits) when 
Marduk, the personification of the Sun and the early city god of 
Babylon, became the principal god of Babylonia and the head of 
the pantheon, when Babylon was made the capital, and all the 
attributes of the other gods were absorbed by him.? Again, in 
Egypt in the Eighteenth Dynasty (c. 1400 B.c., Amenhotep III 
and IV) the elaboration of the Sun-cult led to a belief in the uni- 
versal and life-giving power of the Sun-god, who was the author of 
his own being as well as the Creator of all things visible and in- 
visible. “The Aton or solar disk was worshipped as the living 
manifestation of the one God behind the Sun. At Akhetaton 
(horizon of Aton), now called ‘Tell-el-Amarna, between Thebes 
and the sea, Amenhotep, the brother or half-brother of 
‘Tutankhamen, who had changed his name to Ikhnaton, built 
a new capital which was evidently intended as a centre of the 
dissemination of solar monotheism, since the name of the Sun-god 
is the only divine name found there.? Here several sanctuaries 
of Aton were erected, and similar cities were founded in Nubia, 
and probably another in Asia. The recognition of the fatherly 
solicitude of Aton above all creatures— thou art the father 
and mother of all that thou hast made ”—raised this remarkable 
development of monotheism above anything that had been attained 
before in Egypt or elsewhere. The beauty of the eternal and 
universal light was identified with love as the visible evidence of 
the presence of God who is the author of the beneficence of the 
natural order.4 

But why should the Sun-god become an ethical, intelligent, 
and benevolent Creator? ‘The magic word evolution does not 
really explain such a development of monotheism because there 
is no obvious reason why there should be one god rather than many, 
and such an intelligent people as the Greeks found that polytheism 


1 W.R. Smith, Religion of the Semites (London, 1907), pp. 84 ff. 

2 Jastrow, Religious Belief and Practice in Babylonia and Assyria (New York, 
I9II), pp. 100 ff. 

® Breasted, Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, pp. 322 ff. 

# Weigall, Akhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt (Edinburgh and London), pp. 1 DE, 


22 The Emergence of Religion 


solved their theological problems more easily than monotheism.1 
It is by no means clear why a centralised government or the 
political predominance of one city over another should cause the 
gods of a nation to become one. ‘hus in Babylonia henotheism 
which centred in Marduk passed into polytheism again because the 
people failed to regard each and every god as the highest deity, 
without conflicting with the claims of any other god, just as in 
Egypt a reaction in favour of the traditional gods took effect after 
the death of Amenhotep IV, and swept away the short-lived cult 
of Aton. 

Once man had come to believe in gods, polytheism fitted in 
with the primitive conception of the universe much better than 
monotheism. Having no conception of the universality and con- 
tinuity of natural causation, early man attributed every event 
which arrested his attention or demanded an explanation to super- 
natural agencies. Cause and effect, and even agent and act, were 
not clearly differentiated. Any extraordinary event that called 
for the help of an intervening agent provided an impetus to pene- 
trate more deeply into the nature of the supernatural powers and 
to establish a more intimate alliance with them. But as know- 
ledge of cause and effect in nature increased, it became apparent 
that the hitherto inexplicable events depended upon natural causes 
rather than on the intervention of departmental deities. “Thus in 
the sixth century B.c., ‘Uhales, the earliest of the Greek philosophers, 
explained the universe as the result of a “ primitive substance ”’ 
which he identified with water, out of which all things were 
evolved ; but Socrates inferred from the presence of design 
in the world that a benevolent Creator existed behind the 
universe, to whom alone the term God is applicable.2. “Therefore 
the monotheism of the Greek philosophers defined God as the 
source and guiding principle of the world. But this is a very 
ditferent conception both of the Deity and of the universe from that 
which found expression in the earlier developments of monotheism. 


1 The few passages in Homeric literature that seem to assert the principle 
of monotheism, as, for example, the use of Qedc in the abstract as the equivalent 
of Zeus [J/. xii. 730; Od. iv. 236], are more easily explained as the expressions 
of a special kind of religious thought and emotion than as a general trend 
towards monotheism, since the doctrine never affected the popular religion. 
Cf. Farnell, The Cult of the Greek States (Oxford, 1896), i. p. 84 ff. 

? Aristotle, Met. i. 3, 9838. Cf. Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (London, 
1908), pp. 47 ff., 141, 314. 


Early Developments of Theism 23 


The benevolent Creators among primitive peoples are certainly 
not the product of philosophical thinking, nor the triumph of the 
unifying principle over the disruptive, of abstract over concrete 
thought. “They would seem rather to represent the purposive 
functioning of an inherent type of thought and emotion,! rather 
than the elaboration of a certain kind of knowledge concerning the 
universe. Hence the recurrence of monotheism in all states of 
culture and in every stage of religious development. ‘There is 
reason to think, as has been explained above, that in Palzolithic 
times there arose a notion akin to the idea of God asa “ transcendent 
Something, a real operative entity of a numinous kind.” ‘The 
concept of supernatural power (7.e. mana) and the belief in Supreme 
Beings represent psychological tendencies rather than stages in 
an evolutionary system. “The remote High God or beneficent 
Creator, as distinct from the deified culture-hero, is apparently 
the climax of primitive religious thought. Although the savage 
has hardly any relations with this All-Father in practice, yet he 
attaches to him a value superior to that of all other mythological 
beings, a value which may well accord with the divine in the 
highest sense.2 Men probably did not search for this conception 
of the Deity in the beginning, since when the primitive mind did 
reflect upon the universe it was invariably led to a polytheistic 
interpretation of nature. But certain individuals were led to it 
spontaneously. In every community there are always a few people 
to whom religion makes a ready appeal, but in the case of the 
majority it is only at certain times—at crises such as birth, marriage, 
death, harvest, etc.—that the religious emotion is aroused to any 
appreciable extent.2 ‘To the intermittently and _ indifferently 
religious ethical monotheism seldom makes an appeal, and therefore 
it is the lesser deities, spirits, totems, or ancestors that men of this 
type usually approach. “The High God thus tends to become 
remote unless he is brought into relation with a popular culture- 
hero or spirit. “This doubtless explains why monotheism invariably 
gave place to polytheism in the religions of antiquity. Never- 
theless, the recurrence of monotheistic notions in Babylonia and 
Egypt, to say nothing of savage Supreme Beings, and the ease with 


1 P. Radin. Cf. Monotheism among Primitive Peoples (London, 1924), 
p. 67. 

2 Otto, op. cét., p. 134. 

3 Cf. Fournal of American Folk-lore, xxvii. (1914), pp. 338 f. Gf. Farnell, 
Cults of the Greek States (Oxford, 1896), i. p. 86. 


24. The Emergence of Religion 


which primitive people identify the Christian idea of God with 
their own, show that this aspect of theism is an innate disposition 
rather than a later product of evolution or a mere survival of 
a primitive revelation. 


3. Towards Monothetsm in Greece and Israel 


The emergence of this “instinct for unification,” as James 
Adam called it, is clearly discernible in the literature of ancient 
Greece as well as in that of Israel. It runs there in two streams, 
the one poetical and popular, the other philosophical, which find 
their confluence in the mind of Plato, at once philosopher and 
poet, and derives from him through Aristotle to Cleanthes and 
the Stoics. It would be rash, perhaps, as we have seen, to trace 
it back to Homer’s notion of the supremacy of Zeus as the father 
of the Olympian divinities. Pindar represents an advance upon 
the Homeric notion in that he abjures all idea of struggles and 
conflicts among the gods, as also does Sophocles ; yet in both the 
current polytheism is accepted rather than renounced. Aeschylus, 
on the contrary, marks a real step forward. It is true that he 
recognises a number of gods. But apart from particular phrases, 
like that poignant utterance of the Chorus in the 4gamemnon 1— 
Lev¢, bot1g mot Eotiv, x.t.A.—there are whole passages, like the 
choric odes in the Suppliants, and at least one whole play, the 
Prometheus, which presuppose a belief that has crossed the border 
of monotheism. In these cases, if other gods are named, they 
are little more than such “ principalities and powers ” as St. Paul 
was to speak of later: the central issue lies between God and 
man. | 

But a far more serious inroad on popular polytheism had 
already been made a generation earlier by Xenophanes, who wrote 
with all the dogmatic certainty, the moral ardour, and even the 
poetical form of a Hebrew prophet. Aristotle says of him that 
“he throws his glance upon the whole heaven and says that God 
is unity !”? 2 Despite occasional dissent, as from Gomperz, modern 
scholarship has not tended to revise that verdict. For Xenophanes 
God is one, uncreated, righteous, and without resemblance to 
man : the only prayer which we may address to Him is for ‘‘ power 
to do what is right.” In this he is nearer to the theism of Jew 

1 Aesch., Ag. 160, cf. Eur., H.F. 1263. 2 Aristotle, Metaph. I. v. 


Early Developments of Theism 3s 


and Christian than is Heraclitus ; for, though like Heraclitus he 
conceives of God as wholly immanent in the universe, he does 
not follow the logic of Pantheism to the point of denying the 
ultimate validity of ethical distinctions. For Heraclitus, on the 
contrary, God is beyond good and evil ; “to God all things are 
beautiful and good and right, but men consider some things wrong 
and others right.” + ‘The truth is that Xenophanes came to far 
closer grips with popular religion than either Aeschylus among 
the poets or Heraclitus among the philosophers ; and his protest 
against the traditional conceptions of deity was to receive classical 
expression a century later in the Republic of Plato. 

Meanwhile philosophy was pursuing a path which more and 
more prepared the way for the break-up of polytheism as a possible 
belief for thoughtful men, ‘The material unity—water, air, fire 
—proclaimed by the Ionian scientists, the logical unity asserted 
by Parmenides the pupil of Xenophanes, the deistic unity asserted 
by Anaxagoras all alike attest an instinct or innate disposition 
which could not rest content with pluralism, and either ignored 
the evidence of the Many or else relegated it to the sphere of 
unreality and opinion, In this atmosphere we are of course far 
removed from the theology proper to the Olympian deities : the 
problem of Being has ousted the problem of the gods: even in 
Anaxagoras the Mind which ordered Chaos in the beginning 
has no other rdle in things to play. Nevertheless we cannot 
regard this development as without significance for Greek theology. 
The abrupt dogmatic form which marks the surviving fragments 
of these philosophers points to its having some other source in 
the mind than either observation or dialectic, and suggests that 
human reason carries somehow within it the affirmation of unity. 

It was reserved for the genius of Plato to give expression, first 
in the Republic and its correlative dialogues, later and with greater 
precision and critical analysis in the Tzmaeus and the Laws, to 
a thoroughly Greek monotheism, and to gather up into it all that 
the poetical imagination, moral earnestness, and metaphysical 
subtlety of his predecessors had portended. Into the Platonic 
conception of God it is impossible here to enter ; nor can we trace 
the criticism of it through which Aristotle passed to his pregnant 
conception of the Unmoved Mover. It will be clear from the 
next essay in this volume how much Western theology owes to 

1 Ritter and Preller, 436. 


26 The Emergence of Religion 


these two great lamps of antiquity. But if evidence be needed 
that the monotheism of ancient Hellas was not only a philo- 
sophical, but a religious belief, it may be found in a few lines of 
the Hymn of Cleanthes, the Stoic : 


O King of kings, 
Through ceaseless ages, God, whose purpose brings 
To birth, whate’er on land or in the sea 
Is wrought, or in high heaven’s immensity ; 
Save what the sinner works infatuate. 
Nay, but thou knowest to make crooked straight : 
Chaos to thee is order : in thine eyes 
The unloved is lovely, who didst harmonise 
‘Things evil with things good, that there should be 
One Word through all things everlastingly.? 


There are few believers in revelation who would not say that 
we hear its accents in these lines. 

But of course it is in Israel that the note of revelation sounds 
most clearly. “he Hebrew prophets certainly did not arrive at their 
remarkable conception of ethical monotheism through a process of 
observation and reflection upon causation, as they held in company 
with the rest of Israel that supernatural beings intervened in natural 
events. But they saw behind all the phenomena of nature one 
creative and sustaining, omniscient and omnipotent will—that of 
Yahweh, the righteous Ruler of the universe, the Doer of justice, 
whose law is holy and whose power is infinite. “Chat such a 
Deity should intervene in the course of nature from time to time 
was not to them extraordinary, since He sends forth the wind, the 
ice, and the snow, and speaks in the thunder, and smites His 
enemies in the hinder parts. “he prophets, therefore, combined 
a primitive theory of the universe and of causation with a pure 
ethical monotheism.? “hus they constitute a unique development 
in the history of revelation. 

Whence did they obtain this knowledge? Clearly they did 
not derive it from the observation of the facts of nature, especially 
as righteousness and not mere benevolence was for them the 
characteristic feature of Yahweh. ‘They give no evidence of 


1 James Adam’s translation in The Vitality of Platonism, Essay IV. 
* H. F. Hamilton, Discovery and Revelation (London, 1915), pp. 98 ff. 


Early Developments of Theism 27, 


possessing a knowledge superior to that of their age and environ- 
ment, as in the case of the ancient philosophers. “They were just 
ordinary men distinguished only by their religious experience and 
spiritual insight (Amos vil. 14). “hey were conscious, in fact, 
of the contrast between their own feelings and ideas, on the one 
hand, and of the purpose and mind of God who constrained them, 
on the other (Amos vil. 2 ff., 153; Is. vi. 5 ff.). “They spoke 
that they did know and testified that they had seen and heard ; 
in other words, they were the recipients of a self-revelation given 
directly by God and not mediated through reflection on the natural 
universe. Each prophet’s message bears the stamp of originality, 
of opposition to contemporary thought, of a word of God forcing 
itself to find expression through the human instrument. dSurely 
here we may reasonably claim to have a revelation from God to 
man independent of human reflection and discovery—‘ a down~ 
rush from the super-conscious,” rather than “‘an uprush from the 
sub-conscious.”’ 1 

That truly religious men from the beginning by reason of 
their innate disposition were made to “seek God and feel after 
Him if haply they might find Him,” seems clear. In this way 
He was not left without witnesses in any age or community, but, 
nevertheless, it was in Israel that the purest form of monotheism 
developed to the exclusion of all other theistic and animistic 
systems. If the view here advanced concerning the emergence 
of religion is correct, there is no adequate reason to deny the exist- 
ence of Hebrew monotheists prior to the rise of the prophets in 
the eighth century B.c. In fact, it would be remarkable if believers 
in a Supreme Deity did not arise from time to time as elsewhere. 
‘There is nothing improbable, for example, in supposing that 
Abraham, who is generally thought to have lived at Ur of the 
Chaldees about 2000 B.c., developed the monolatrous and heno- 
theistic tendency in Babylonian cult at this time in a monotheistic 
direction by assigning to one God all those attributes which 
hitherto had been distributed among many deities. “The traditional 
history of Israel as it is set forth in the Old ‘Testament represents 
a prolonged struggle between a mono- Yahwist minority of religious 
leaders against a polytheistic majority ending in the final triumph 
of the monotheists, “This seems to be a very likely situation in 
view of the evidence from other sources which we have here 

1 Gore, Belief in God (London, 1921), pp. 102 ff. 


28 The Emergence of Religion 


briefly examined. ‘Thus while there is no reason to suppose with 
Renan that the Semites, more than any other people, had a racial 
tendency to monotheism, they unquestionably produced men who 
were capable of transforming a system of nature-worship and 
polytheism into the lofty ethical monotheistic ideals of Amos, 
Hosea, and Isaiah, and thereby prepared the way for our Lord 
and His Church. ‘The ethical teaching of the prophets emphasised 
the moral purity of God; their Messianic expectations became 
more spiritualised and complex, until the supreme manifestation 
was vouchsafed in Him in whom dwelt the fulness of God. ‘The 
main light thus shone more purely and powerfully till all shadows 
of lesser deities had fled away, and the conceptions of Israel were 
fulfilled by Him who was at once the light to lighten the Gentiles 
and the glory of His people Israel. By the Eternal Son assuming 
conditions of time the religious impulse was satisfied that led 
primitive man to bring himself into union with the Divine by 
sacrifice and prayer to lesser supernatural beings. “Thus Catholic 
Christianity, with its doctrine of the Trinity in unity of the 
Godhead, and its sacramental system, meets the entire need of man 
and thereby supplies that which was wanting in the earlier con- 
ceptions both of monotheism and polytheism. “The Incarnation 
and its extension in the Church, therefore, fulfilled the dumb, 
dim expectations of mankind throughout the ages. 


THE VINDICATION OF RELIGION 
BY ALFRED EDWARD TAYLOR 


CONTENTS 


INTRODUCTORY ‘ : , : ; 

The Task of the eee How it Differs from Demon- 
stration, but Interpretative of the Suggestions of Life: the 
Relevant Suggestions may be found in (a) Physical 
Nature, (b) the Moral Life, (c) the Religious Life itself. 


I. From Nature to Gop : : : 
Suggestions from Physical Nara The Cosmological 
Argument for the being of God, its Meaning and Force. 

The Argument from Design. 


IJ. From Man To Gop : 

The Evidence of Man’s Moral Lift to - Reality of a Good 
incommensurable with all Secular and Temporal Goods, 
which can only be conceived as Union of Heart and Will 
with God. 


III. From Gop to Gop 


The Evidence of the “ Religions E xperience,’ not discredited 
by the fact that some such alleged experiences are illusions . 

The sense of the“ Holy” ; 

Necessity of Criticism and Interpretation 


PAGE 


31 


46 


59 


7° 


7O 
75 
W 


«< Tres sunt qui testimonium dant .. . et tres unum sunt.” 


INTRODUCTORY 


“ Being ready always to give answer to every man that asketh you 
a reason concerning the hope that is in you, yet with meekness 
and fear.”’—1 Peter ili. 15. 


Ir might fairly be said that these few words, written in the infancy 
of the Christian Church, sufficiently indicate for all time the 
scope of Christian “apologetics”? and the temper in which they 
should be conducted. ‘The Christian is eminently a hopeful 
being ; he has hopes for himself and for his kind which surprise 
the non-Christian society around him. Since, as his neighbours 
can readily satisfy themselves, he is not a mere lunatic, he pre- 
sumably has good grounds for his hopefulness which he can make 
intelligible to others, and it is his duty to produce them when they 
are asked for. But he is to do so courteously and carefully. 
- His faith is not-to be a blind faith for which he can give no better 
reason than that it makes him comfortable to hold it, or that he 
has been ordered to hold it by some authority into whose trust- 
worthiness it is forbidden to inquire. “Those who ask the reason 
of his hope are asking a fair question and are entitled to a candid 
and mannerly answer. ‘They are not to be met, as they too often 
have been by imperfect Christians, with revilings and anger 
at their presumption in daring to put the question. ‘The answer 
is to be given not merely courteously but ‘‘ with fear,” with 
a scrupulous anxiety not to exaggerate the strength of his case, 
to push an argument further than it will legitimately reach, or 
to cover up the difficulties of his position. Above all, there 
is no suggestion that the Christian believer should expect to 
be able to demonstrate the truth of his convictions as one may 
demonstrate a proposition in the mathematics. No doubt we 
should all like to show that it would be as absurd in a rational 
being to deny the truths upon which we base our highest hopes 
for ourselves and for the world as it would be to deny the state- 
ments of the multiplication table, or of an accurately calculated set 
of logarithms, But just in so far asa man could succeed in doing 


Q2 The Vindication of Religion 


this he would be converting “ faith’’ into knowledge and hope 
into vision.! ‘The apostolic writer makes no such demand as this 
on the believers whom he isaddressing. It may be that none of the 
considerations on which their hopes are founded can be proved to 
demonstration, in a way which must compel the assent of every 
rational man ; it is certain that not all of them can be so demon- 
strated, If they could be, faith would have lost all its value as a 
test of a man’s spiritual condition ; as the theologians put it, faith 
would no longer be a response of the soul called out by “ grace” 
and could consequently have no “merit” towards salvation. 
Where demonstration is forthcoming, assent, Just so far as a man 
is reasonable, is not free but necessitated ; the worth of a faith 
in anything at all as a revelation of a man’s inmost self depends 
on the fact that it is a free assent to the drawings of a dimly descried 
high and noble object which cannot be demonstrated not to be an 
illusion. It is because this logical possibility of illusion is never 
simply closed, where faith is in question, as it is in matters of 
demonstration, that the exercise of faith ennobles the man who 
has it—in fact, that faith “justifies.” We can readily see that 
this is so when we compare the attitude of the religious man who 
lives by his faith in God with similar attitudes to which we give 
the same name. We speak of a man’s “noble”’ confidence in 
the loyalty of his friend, or the fidelity of his wife, in the face of all 
appearances to the contrary ; there would be nothing “ noble” 
in being convinced of your wife’s fidelity, if you had locked her up 
in a high tower and carried the key away in your pocket. The 
moral nobility of trust is only possible when a man Is trusting where 
he cannot demonstrate, or, at any rate, has not demonstrated and 
does not know that he ever will. (The Vatican Council, it is 
true, decreed that ‘‘ the existence of God can be demonstrated by 
natural reason.” But its decree was not meant to legitimate 
suspense of assent until the demonstration has been produced and 
found satisfactory.) 

It may even be worth while to remark that this attitude 
of trust and faith, where demonstration is impossible, is just as 
characteristic of science, as the word is commonly understood, 
as it is of religion, Outside the sphere of mathematics how far 
can we say that any of the propositions which make up the 


1 In medieval language, he would be exchanging the /umen gratiae for the 
lumen gloriae,a thing impossible, except by a miracle, for Christians still in the 
tate of “* pilgrimage.” 


Introductory 33 


“scientific view of the world” are strictly and rigidly proved ? 
It is at least certain that most of them have never received and 
do not seem capable of receiving anything like demonstration. 
Thus it is a commonplace that all natural science is bound up with 
a belief in the principle that “ nature ”’ is in some way “ uniform.” 
Without this conviction it would be quite impossible to argue 
from the handful of facts we have learned, by observation or active 
experiment, about the little region of space and time open for our 
direct examination to the structural laws of events in vastly remote 
spaces and distant times. Yet it is quite certain both that this 
fundamental principle cannot be demonstrated, since all reasoning 
in the sciences depends on assuming it, and that it cannot even be 
definitely expressed by any formula which does not appear highly 
questionable. Or, to take a rather different instance, no scientific 
man to-day doubts that the enormous variety of vegetable and 
animal species have been developed in the course of a long history 
from a few simpler types, perhaps a single simpler type. “The 
precise factors which have contributed to this development, the 
precise steps in the process, may be and are the subjects of contro- 
versy, but the general conception seems to have established itself 
permanently. But if we are to speak of proof or demonstration 
_ in the matter, it is plain that we are using the words in a very lax 

sense. It has been said of Darwin that the actual basis of fact 
on which his gigantic edifice of speculation was raised amounts to 
little more than the experiences of a small number of breeders 
of animals, and it might equally well be said of the later formidable 
theory which directly contravenes the peculiar Darwinian con- 
ception of the process of “‘ evolution ” as due to the accumulation 
in successive generations of imperceptible differences, that it too 
has for its foundation in observed fact only a relatively few ex- 
periences of gardeners and observational botanists. In both cases 
the superstructure of theory is quite incommensurable with the 
narrow basis of fact on which it is reared, Little indeed would be 
left of “‘ evolutionary science” if we cut away everything which 
a cautious logician would pronounce not proved by the evidence. 
To take a third illustration. “The late Philip Gosse was at once 
a keen naturalist and a firm believer in the literal inerrancy of the 
Book of Genesis. Asanaturalist he could not deny the genuineness 


1 See particularly the thorough discussion by Professor C. D. Broad, 
** Relation between Induction and Probability,” in Minp, N.S., Nos. 108, 113 
(October 1918, January 1920). 
D 


34. The Vindication of Religion 


of the discoveries of fossil remains which suggest that life on 
our planet had its beginnings at an era immensely more remote 
than any honest interpretation of the Book of Genesis will allow. 
As an amateur theologian he felt unable to deny the inerrancy 
of Genesis. Accordingly, he reconciled his theology with his 
natural science by the theory that the earth was indeed created 
out of nothing a few thousand years ago, but created with fossil 
deposits ready-made under its surface. It isnot surprising that the 
men of science would have nothing to say to Mr. Gosse’s theory ; 
yet it is equally clear that there is not and cannot be any means of 
demonstrating its falsity. What led to the ignoring of the specu- 
lation was not, as would be the case with a claim to have “squared 
the circle,” knowledge of its falsity, but sound scientific instinct. 
Speaking quite generally, I suppose we may say that no great 
and far-reaching scientific theory is ever adopted because it has 
been demonstrated. It is not believed because it can be shown 
by stringent logic that all other accounts of facts involve self- 
contradiction. ‘The real reason for belief is that the theory pro- 
vides a key for the interpretation of the facts on which it is said 
to be founded, that on further investigation it is found also to 
provide a key to the interpretation of numerous groups of often 
very dissimilar facts, which were either uninterpretable or actually 
unknown when the theory was first put forward, and that even 
where at first sight there are facts which seem refractory to the 
proposed interpretation, the general theory can be made to fit 
them by some modification which does not interfere with its 
continued use for the interpretation of the facts by which it was 
first suggested. In this respect the interpretation of the “ book 
of Nature” is exactly similar to the process of deciphering a 
cryptogram or an inscription in a hitherto unknown language. 
The decipherer has first to be in possession of a “key” of 
promising make. ‘Thus, the inscription may be bilingual and 
one language may be a known one; there may be good reasons 
for believing that the cipher message is in English, and this enables 
the reader to make a probable conjecture from the relative 
frequency of certain signs alone or in combination. ‘The original 
identifications will usually be in part erroneous, but even where 
they are so, if enough of them are correct, the partial decipherment 
will make the words of the text sufficiently intelligible to lead to 
subsequent correction of initial mistakes, though when all our 


Introductory its 


ingenuity has been expended, it may still remain the case that some 
of the signs we are trying to decipher have to be left uninterpreted 
owing to the insufficiency of our data. If our inscription were 
interminable, we might readily have to acknowledge that, though 
successive scrutiny made each new reading more nearly correct 
than those which went before, a final and definitive transcription 
was beyond our reach, and that all we could do was to make the 
tentative and provisional element in our readings steadily smaller. 
It is hardly necessary to mention the way in which this tentative 
process of decipherment of symbols, applied to the hieroglyphs of 
Egypt and the cuneiform of Babylon, has already enriched our 
historical knowledge of the early civilisations by making real to us 
the politics and social life of people who, a few generations ago, 
were little but names to us, or the still greater flood of light on the 
past of our race which may yet come from the successful reading of 
Cretan and Hittite records. 

Consider for a moment the assumption which lies behind such 
an attempt at the reading of a cipher. It is taken for granted 
that the marks we are examining convey a message or statement 
which someone was meant to understand. ‘They must have been 
read and understood by someone and therefore presumably may be 
_ read and understood by us, if we will have patience. Commonly, 
no doubt, we should say that the very fact that an intelligible 
statement has been extracted from the marks proves both that 
this general assumption was correct and that the meaning the 
decipherer has extracted is the meaning intended by the composer. 
"But, strictly speaking, we have no right to call this demonstration. 
If the series of marks is a very short one it is quite a reasonable 
suggestion that there is zo meaning behind them. ‘There is a 
fair chance that in some cases they were not made by man at all, 
and that in others they were made in mere idleness and are quite 
insignificant. Even if the series is a tolerably long one, there is 
an appreciable chance that the various symbols may succeed one 
another in the very order which would yield an intelligible sense 
without any such sense being in the mind of the inscriber. Yet 
if a proposed decipherment yields a satisfactory sense, a sound 
instinct will lead to its acceptance long before the point is reached 
at which the probability that it was unintended becomes mathe- 
matically negligible. We may make the same point in a rather 
different way. Why do sober scholars refuse to believe in the 


36 The Vindication of Religion 


existence of a ‘‘ Baconian”’ cipher in the works of Shakespeare ? 
Not because the thing is an impossibility. Indeed, it might be 
argued that the very fact that an ingenious “ Baconian,” by 
applying his “‘key”’ to such an enormous mass of writing, can 
extract a narrative with any sort of coherence supplies a high 
mathematical probability that there really is a narrative to be 
extracted and that the “ Baconian”’ is, at any rate, largely right 
in his proposed reading of the “cipher.” ‘The real reason why 
sober scholars refuse to believe in such a cipher, and would still 
refuse were the ‘“‘ Baconians”’ more able than they are to make 
the “key” work, without a host of subsidiary hypotheses to 
explain its apparent failures, is their unproved and unprovable 
conviction of the inherent craziness of the whole thing. It is 
“not in human nature ”’ that a sane man should have conceived 
the idea of embodying a secret narrative in a series of plays produced 
over an interval of many years for the entertainment of the public, 
nor, if he had done so, that the seventeenth-century printers of 
a posthumous volume of such magnitude should have been so 
scrupulously exact in their typography as to leave the key to the 
narrative unobliterated. “These are convictions which we can- 
not demonstrate by an appeal to the mathematical calculus of 
Probability ; they rest simply on our conviction of the sanity of 
the parties concerned. ‘“* Men do not do such things.” 

Now, let us apply these considerations to the closely parallel 
case of the whole body of scientific workers who are engaged 
in the decipherment of the book of Nature. Here too we shall 
find that the whole interpretation presupposes convictions which 
are neither self-evident nor demonstrably true. No great scientific 
theory is accepted because it accounts for all the facts of Nature 
without a remainder. “There always are facts which are recalci- 
trant to explanation by the theory and remain over as “‘ difficulties,” 
and, for this very reason, it is idle to reject a great scientific theory, 
as a certain type of apologist often proposes to do, because there 
are difficulties which it cannot explain. It would, for example, 
be silly to reject the theory of “evolution ”—I mean here the 
theory of the derivation of living species from a smaller number of 
original types—on the plea that the theory has its unexplained 
“* difficulties,” or that there are grave differences between eminent 
men of science about the particular process which leads to the 
appearance of a new permanent “ kind.” Even the greatest of all 





Introductory Oi7. 


modern scientific theories, the Newtonian gravitational astronomy, 
all along had its difficulties, as Newton himself was well aware. 
To mention only the most far-reaching and obvious of these 
difficulties, in the gravitational astronomy it appears as an out- 
standing and unexplained oddity that we have to assume the 
“law of gravity” side by side with the general laws of motion : 
the “laws” of themselves indicate no reason why there should be 
this universal attraction between material particles or why it should 
follow the law of the “inverse square” rather than any other. 
This was the reason why Newton himself was careful to hint that 
there must be some as yet undiscovered “‘ cause of gravity,” and 
one principal attraction offered by the Theory of Relativity is that 
it removes this particular difficulty by making gravitation itself a 
direct consequence of its revised version of the laws of motion. 
Yet it is notorious that the Theory of Relativity has its own 
difficulties too, and that at present some of these are so grave as 
to prevent many eminent physicists from accepting it. 

Perhaps I may be pardoned if I take still a third illustration. 
One of the first principles of the science of Thermodynamics 1s 
the so-called “principle of Carnot” or “law of the dissipation 
of energy.” In virtue of this principle, heat always tends to pass 
from a body of higher temperature to bodies of lower. “The hotter 
body tends to impart heat to colder bodies in its vicinity, so that it 
becomes cooler and they warmer. It follows that at the end of 
a period of time which, however long, must be finite, the heat of 
our stellar universe must ultimately be distributed uniformly over 
its whole extent ; change, variety, and life must thus be lost in one 
dreary monotony. But if we ask why these dismal consequences 
have not as yet occurred, we are driven to assume that at a remote, 
but still finite, distance of past time the distribution of heat through 
the stellar universe must have been one which, on mathematical 
principles, is infinitely improbable. ‘The difficulty is a recognised 
one, and attempts have been made to meet it, though apparently 
without success. In fact, there seems to be ample justification 
for the thesis of a brilliant writer on the philosophy of science, 
| that all a scientific theory ever does in the way of explanation is to 
remove the inexplicable a few steps farther back.? 


1 E, Meyerson, L’explication dans les sciences (1921). For the particular 
difficulty here specified see bk. ii. chap. 6 (vol. i. pp. 181-225) and appendix iv. 


(vol. 11. p. 405). 


38 The Vindication of Religion 


Yet, in face of all the difficulties which beset every great 
scientific theory and are much more familiar to the scientific man 
himself than they can be to outsiders, there is one attitude towards 
Nature which no scientific man ever thinks of taking up. He 
never says, as the pessimistic man of letters sometimes does, 
“since all scientific theory of Nature whatever has its difficulties, 
we may infer that the whole attempt at the construction of a 
scientific theory of Nature has been a mistake. Nature is radically 
unknowable and irrational ; there is no sort of coherence between 
our notions of intelligibility and the reality in which we are 
immersed. Let us have done with this secular nightmare and 
interest ourselves in something else.”” No one who has. the 
scientific spirit in him ever dreams of the possibility that Nature 
is like one of those riddles to which there is no answer. “The 
progress of science absolutely depends on the conviction that 
our difficulties arise from the fragmentary character of our know- 
ledge, not from the inherent incoherence of Nature. Even as 
concerns our acquaintance with what we call the “ bare facts,” 
it holds good that what we are looking for determines what we 
see. If men ever convinced themselves that Nature is in her 
own structure incoherent, not only should we have no more 
scientific “theories,” we should cease, except occasionally and 
accidentally, to discover the “facts”? which suggest theories. Yet 
It is not demonstrable that Nature is not incoherent, and it is not 
self-evident that the sceptic’s assertion that we have no right to 
expect her to conform to our “ human ”’ standards of coherence 
is absurd. Scientific progress is only made possible by an act of 
faith—faith that there really is coherence in Nature and that the 
more we look for it, the more of it we shall find. ‘The words in 
which Newman describes his own attitude to the “ difficulties ” of 
theology might equally well be used by men of science with 
reference to the no less real ‘‘ difficulties’? of natural science : 
“ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.” 1 

If all this is so, we cannot be fairly asked to justify religion 
by producing a different kind of vindication, or a fuller degree 
of vindication, of the “ religious view ” of the world than the man 
of science would think adequate if he were called on to “‘ vindicate ” 

1 Apologia, Pt. VII. ‘The parallel would not apply in the case of a theologian 
who regards the whole of theological knowledge, or at any rate of its principal 


propositions, as revealed together once for all in a definitive form. It holds 
of Newman precisely in virtue of his doctrine of “‘ development.” 


Introductory 39 


the “scientific view’ of the world. In either case the most that 
can be demanded of us is to show that there are real and un- 
deniable facts which call for explanation and must not be explained 
away; that the interpretation supplied brings coherence and 
“sense? into them, where they would, without it, be an un- 
intelligible puzzle ; that the more steadily and systematically the 
principles we fall back on are employed, the less puzzling does the 
reality we are trying to interpret become. Ina word, we need to 
show that there is the same solid ground for holding that religion 
cannot be dismissed as a passing illusion incident to a particular 
stage in the mental growth of humanity as there is for holding the 
same view about science. If we cannot demonstrate that religion 
is not temporary illusion, neither can we demonstrate that science 
is in any better position. And it may be worth while to observe 
in express words that the real weight of the “‘ evidence”? which 1s 
accepted as sufficient ground for assurance can only be judged by 
a mind of the right kind and with the right training. “This holds 
good without exception in all branches of “secular” learning. 
An experiment which the trained chemist or physicist sees to be 
“crucial” as deciding for or against a speculation will often seem 
of no particular significance to a layman ; it requires another and 
a different type of mind and a different training to appreciate 
the sort of considerations which a trained palzographer will 
regard as decisive for the authenticity of a document, the soundness 
of a reading, the worth of a speculation about the relations between 
the various extant manuscripts of an ancient author. 


1 This is why even men of high intellectual power so often make themselves 
merely ridiculous when they venture into fields of knowledge where they are 
amateurs. ‘Their training has not prepared them to be sound judges of the 
kind of considerations which are decisive in dealing with the unfamiliar 
matter. It is notorious that some of the very worst Biblical and Shakespearian 
** criticism ’’ has been produced by lawyers who are very sound judges of evi- 
dence within their own sphere. The trouble is that their training disposes 
them to assume that what cannot be “* proved’ under the rules of the English 
or some other law of evidence cannot be adequately established in history or 
in literary criticism, or that what would be regarded as sufficient evidence for 
a British jury must always be sufficient evidence for the historian or the critic. 
Both assumptions are mistaken. Thus a “lawyer turned apologist ’’ will 
argue that the critical analysis of the Pentateuch must be rejected because no 
one can “‘ produce to the court ’’ copies of the earlier documents into which it is 
analysed, or again that he has proved the correctness of the traditional ascription 
of a work like the Fourth Gospel to a particular author by merely showing that 
the tradition is ancient, as though some sort of law of ‘‘ prescription ’’ held good 
in questions of authorship. 


 ] 


AO The Vindication of Religion 


In secular matters men of sound sense are pretty quick to 
recognise the truth of this principle. No one would think of 
regarding the verdict of an archeologist or a chemist on a moot 
point in law as deriving any particular value from the eminence of 
the archzologist or the chemist in his own subject ; no one would 
attach any weight to a Lord Chancellor’s opinion about the 
genuineness of an alleged Rembrandt, or a disputed fragment of 
Simonides, because the opinion was that of the best Lord Chancellor 
the country had ever possessed. We all understand that the sort 
of consensus of “authorities”? which makes it proper for the man 
who is not an “authority” to dispense with his own private 
judgment is the consensus of “ authorities’ in a particular subject, 
who derive their claim to authority from native aptitude and long 
training. But we ought to be equally ready to recognise that in 
the same way the only consensus which is of weight in matters of 
religion is the consensus of deeply religious men. Religion is not 
shown to be an “‘illusion”’ because worldly-minded men, who have 
never felt the sense of personal sin or the need of adoration, can 
see nothing in it, any more than, for example, the Theory of 
Relativity is shown to be “moonshine,” because it seems un- 
intelligible to the type of man whom R. L. S. used to speak of 
as “the common banker,” or disinterested devotion to be an 
illusion, because a clever cynical diplomatist assures one that he 
has never felt such devotion himself and sees no evidence of it in 
the behaviour of others. If the diplomatist sees no disinterested- 
ness in human life, it is because he is not looking for it, and the 
reason why he does not look for it in other men is probably that 
he has never felt it within himself. “The evidence which a 
‘Talleyrand finds non-existent may be overwhelming to a plain 
man who has friendliness in his own heart and consequently finds 
it in his fellows, just because he goes half-way to meet them by 
showing that he expects it. In the same way the “ evidences of 
religion,” whatever they may turn out to be, must not be expected 
to produce much conviction in the man of thoroughly irreligious 
temper who has done nothing to counteract that temper, the 
merely sensual or ambitious or proud or inquisitive ; it is sufficient 
that they should be found adequate by those who have within them 
at least the making of “ holy and humble men of heart,”’ who feel 
the need of something they can love and adore without any of the 
reservations which clear insight sets to all our devotion to friend 


Introductory 41 


or wife or child or country, the need of deliverance from their own 
ingrained sinfulness and self-centredness, support and guidance 
in their own creaturely helplessness and ignorance, abiding peace 
in a world where things are mutable. If, among all their differ- 
ences, such men are agreed that what they are seeking with their 
whole hearts is really to be found, it is no detraction from the 
weight of such evidence to say that others who are looking for 
nothing of the kind have, very naturally, not found what they 
never troubled to seek. It is as though one should say that there 
can be no gold in a certain district because I, who know little or 
nothing of the signs of the presence of this metal, and care less, 
have traversed the district from end to end, without discovering 
what I made no attempt to find.? 

So far we have been speaking of the similarity of the religious 
man’s quest with that of the student of science, a similarity which 
may be briefly expressed by saying that both are seeking a clearer 
and more coherent explanation of something which they find 
obscurely and confusedly “‘ given” as part of our human ex- 
perience, or, if you prefer to put it so, “suggested” by that 
experience. “The common problem of both is to find the pre- 
suppositions of the facts of life. But it may be necessary to add 
a remark on an important difference in the kind of facts with which 
the two quests deal. Perhaps we do not commonly recognise 
as clearly as is desirable that “ science” in the current sense of the 


1 These considerations ought to make us careful in not being too eager to 
get the blessing of scientific men on our religion. If both our religion and our 
science rest on truth, they cannot, of course, come into conflict. And it is our 
duty as religious men to see that we do not confuse religion with science by 
asserting or denying, ¢.g., biological theories on grounds which have nothing 
to do with the kind of evidence which is available and relevant in biology. 
But equally there is the same obligation on the men of science not to judge of 
matters which belong to religion on irrelevant evidence. I incline to think 
that though both theologians and students of natural science have sinned in 
this way in the past, at the present moment it is the men of science who have the 
greater sin. In every branch of the Christian Church theologians are at 
present only too eager to snatch at what they take to be the “ latest results ”’ 
in the natural sciences and work them into the fabric of their creed. Usually 
they commit the two inevitable errors of the amateur: they misunderstand the 
precise meaning of the scientific speculation and they often take a brilliant but 
disputed hypothesis, which a few years may see abandoned or gravely modified 
in the light of newer knowledge, for a fully established theory. But the “ man 
of science” is often as bad if not worse, (worse, I mean, because his vaunted 
intellectual training ought to have borne fruit in the production of the judicious 
mind). 


42 The Vindication of Religion 


word is not the whole of knowledge but a special kind of know- 
ledge which makes up by its one-sidedness and limitation of scope 
for the precision and exactitude of its vision, just as the field of 
view under the microscope compensates its definition and wealth 
of detail by the narrowness of its limits. “The natural sciences, 
in the first place, if we take the view of their range which is per- 
haps commonest among their votaries, are exclusively concerned 
with physical reality, what is outside and around us. Of our- 
selves as movers and agents they have nothing to say. ‘hey 
can indeed tell us much about the human brain, but always about 
the human brain as it.is for the physiological or anatomical 
observer who is looking at it from the outside. Even if we take, 
as I for one think we must, a rather more generous view and 
admit that psychology has established its right to count as an 
independent natural science, and that anthropology, in its various 
branches, is at least a natural science zm freri, the case remains In 
principle the same. ‘The rigidly “ scientific’ psychologist—and 
this 1s precisely what creates the special difficulty of his science— 
treats the mind of which he discourses exactly as the geologist 
might treat a rock, or the biologist a frog. “The mind of which he 
speaks is a “typical”? human mind not his own, at which he is 
looking on, (and at times interfering to see what the result of his 
interference will be). The anthropologist, in like fashion, dis- 
courses of the religious cultus, the superstitions, the marriage 
customs, the moral codes, of groups of his fellow-creatures as they 
look to an outside observer who does not follow the cult, share 
the terrors and hopes, or practise the customs of which he treats. 
So long as we keep strictly to the methods of the natural sciences, 
we never penetrate, so to say, within our own skins. We deal 
with human practice in all its forms and with the convictions it 
expresses simply as ‘‘ objects presented to our notice,” as they 
might equally be presented to the notice of a being who shared 
none of the convictions and shaped his life by none of them. 
It is this attitude of detachment which makes it possible to intro- 
duce into our study the quantitativeand numerical precision which 
is the peculiar glory of science. But it ought to be clear to us 
that our acquaintance with our own inmost self and character, 
however come by, is not originally got by observation of an “ object 
presented to our notice.”? Our loves, our hates, our hopes, our 
despondencies, our pleasures, our pains are not revealed to us by 


Introductory 43 


inspection of them as presented objects but by living through 
the experience of loving, hating, hoping, despairing and the like. 
It is only after we have learned by living through them what these 
experiences are that we can artificially, if we like, contrive to put 
ourselves in the position of the observer with a microscope and 
look on at the expressions of personal mental life in another, or 
even in ourselves, as if it were a presented object. If it were only 
that, the ‘‘ experimental psychologist’ would be attempting an 
impossible task, because he would be without any key to the real 
significance of his observation of the behaviour of himself or of 
any one else. ‘This, as it seems to me, is the real reason why all 
that gives human action its significance for the poet, the biographer, 
the historian, falls, and must fall, wholly outside the purview of 
the scientific psychologist and the anthropologist. “The “ trick,” 
if I may call it so, on which these sciences depend for their special 
success, lies just in treating human doings and thoughts as though 
they were ‘“‘events” forming part of the great event which is 
Nature. But in truth the thoughts and deeds of men are not 
mere “events”? but something more: they are personal acts. 
Hence, I submit, the information of the psychologist and the 
anthropologist is true and valuable so far as it goes, but it does not 
go very far. The knowledge of man which makes the great 
biographer or historian or dramatic poet, the knowledge of the 
self, its strength and weakness, won by meditation and prayer go 
infinitely deeper ; that is knowledge of self from within, and this 
explains why such knowledge brings wisdom where the knowledge 
of the other kind amounts at best to science. A life spent in 
the psychological laboratory, or in anthropological research, may 
leave a man no more than a learned fool, but a fool will never be 
a great historian, whatever his learning. In fact, the confusion 
of knowledge with the sub-species of it which we call natural 
science would lead directly to the conclusion that there can be no 
history of a human society, except in the loose sense in which we 
might talk of the history of an ant-heap or even of a lump of 
sandstone.! If any of my readers are acquainted, as I hope some 
of them may be, with the writings of St. Bonaventura on practical 
religion, they will remember that consideration of what is around 


1 For a fuller discussion of the difference between scientific and historical 
knowledge I may perhaps refer to a short essay by myself in Minp, N.S., 
No. 124, where some rival views on the matter are also expressed by Dr. Schiller. 


/ 
44. The Vindication of Religion 

us, consideration of what is within, consideration of what is 
above us, are with him three successive well-marked stages of 
the intellectual ascent to knowledge of God. ‘The restriction 
of the facts to which we look for the vindication of religion to 
facts which fall within the purview of the natural sciences and 
no others would, of course, cut off at one stroke all material for 
the higher stages of this contemplative ascent. 

They are, however, not rightfully excluded from our survey. 
Even if no one fact or group of facts which can be dealt with by 
the methods of the museum and the laboratory of itself points 
Godward, it may well be that when we attempt to take a philo- 
sophic, or, as Plato says, a ‘“‘ synoptical”” view of physical Nature 
as a whole, when we ask after the ultimate presuppositions of 
natural science, we shall find that Nature “‘as a whole” exhibits 
unmistakable indications of being after all not a “ whole,” but 
something incomplete and dependent, hints at least at the existence 
of a reality beyond itself which is at once its source and its com- 
pletion. When we further take into view the aspirations of man 
as a moral person, we may find that they carry us further. “They 
may be found not only to point to the existence of a reality above 
and beyond Nature but to indicate, however dimly, something of 
the character of that reality. And when we further come to 
consider the specific experiences which are the supports of personal 
religion, and, so far as we can see, must have been the origin of the 
different religions known to us from history, we may have reason 
to think that here we are actually in the presence of a genuine 
self-disclosure, always imperfect but none the less real, of this 
“ super-nature ”’ itself. If this can be maintained, we shall have 
a justification for following Bonaventura’s line of thought. “There 
will be a witness of Nature to God, a witness of Ethics to God, and 
a witness of Religion itself to God, none of which can be dis- 
regarded without mutilating the rich content of human experience, 
and the three witnesses will be at one in pointing to the same 
reality. On each of these three lines of thought I propose to offer 
a few remarks, 


(It may be thought strange that I have so far said nothing 
about a topic which bulks very large in most philosophical dis- 
cussions of religious problems, the metaphysical way to God. 
‘The omission has been made of set purpose. So far as we can 


Introductory 45 


draw any distinction between metaphysics and science, the differ- 
ence seems to be little more than that metaphysics is, as it has been 
called by someone, “an unusually hard effort to think clearly.” 
Or, to put it in a different way, any attempt to discover the most 
ultimate presuppositions on which any branch of knowledge falls 
back is the metaphysic of that particular branch of knowledge, and, 
since we cannot be said to have mastered any subject until we have 
discovered what its most ultimate presuppositions are, the study of 
any organised body of knowledge, scientific or historical, must 
finally culminate in metaphysics. ‘This is, so far as I can see, 
the meaning of the old definition of metaphysics as “‘ the science 
of first principles,” or “ the science of being as such.” From this 
point of view there is no real distinction between a peculiar meta- 
physical way to God and the ways we have just enumerated. In 
studying them we are from start to finish within the region of 
metaphysics and there is no fourth special ‘‘ way of metaphysics ” 
to follow. It will be the object of the remainder of this essay to 
urge that, no matter which of the three “ ways’ we may choose 
to follow, we are conducted from similar starting-points along 
similar lines to the same goal, the difference being only that the 
character of the route and the goal is clearer if we follow the second 
route than if we confine ourselves to the first, and again if we 
follow the third than if we confine ourselves to the first two. 
‘Thus we shall agree with Bonaventura that in truth there are not 
three different routes, but three distinguishable stages on the same 
route.+) 

1 The references to Bonaventura are primarily to the well-known Itinerarium 
Mentis in Deum and the Soliloquium de quatuor mentalibus exercitits (in S. Bona- 
venturae opuscula decem, Edit. Minor, Quaracchi, 1900). 

Among modern works I may specially mention, as illustrative largely of the 
first ‘‘ way,” Professor James Ward’s Naturalism and Agnosticism and Realm 
of Ends, and Professor A. S. Pringle-Pattison’s The Idea of God ; as illustra- 
tive of the second, Professor Sorley’s Moral Values and the Idea of God; as 
illustrative of the third, such a work as Otto’s now famous Das Heilige (English 
tr., The Idea of the Holv. Oxford University Press, 1923). 

See further the note appended at the end of the essay. Naturally one or 
other of these “‘ ways’’ will appeal to us with special force according to our 
individual interests and education. But it leads to mental one-sidedness, and 
religious one-sidedness too, to disregard any of them. “Thomism suffers from 
exclusive devotion to the first, Kant from his undue concentration on the 


second. Excessive preoccupation with the third leads to a blind Fideism and 
leaves us at the mercy of our own personal uncriticised fancies and feelings. 


o 


46 The Vindication of Religion 


I. From Nature To Gop 


(1) The argument “ from Nature up to Nature’s God ” can 
be presented in very different forms and with very different degrees 
of persuasiveness, corresponding with the more or less definite 
and accurate knowledge of different ages about the detailed facts 
of Nature and the greater or less degree of articulation attained 
by Logic. But the main thought underlying these very different 
variations is throughout the same, that the incomplete points to 
_ the complete, the dependent to the independent, the temporal to 
the eternal. Nature, in the sense of the complex of “ objects 
presented to our notice,” the bodies animate and inanimate around 
us, and our own bodies which interact with them and each other, 
is, in the first place, always something incomplete; it has no 
limits or bounds ; the horizon in space and time endlessly recedes 
as we carry our adventure of exploration further ; “still beyond 
the sea, there is more sea.” What is more, Nature is always 
dependent ; no part of it contains its complete explanation in itself ; 
to explain why any part is what it is, we have always to take into 
account the relations of that part with some other, which in turn 
requires for explanation its relation to a third, and so on without 
end. And the fuller and richer our knowledge of the content 
of Nature becomes, the more, not the less, imperative do we find 
the necessity of explaining everything by reference to other things 
which, in their turn, call for explanation in the same way. Again, 
mutability is stamped on the face of every part of Nature. ‘“ All 
things pass and nothing abides.” What was here in the past is 
now here no more, and what is here now will some day no longer 
be here. ‘‘ There stood the rock where rolls the sea.” Even 
what looks at first like permanence turns out on closer examination 
to be only slower birth and decay. Even the Christian Middle 
Ages thought of the “ heavens ”’ as persisting unchanged from the 
day of their creation to that of their coming dissolution in fiery 
heat and new creation ; modern astronomy tells us of the gradual 
production and dissolution of whole “stellar systems.” Thoughts 
like these suggested to the Greek mind from the very infancy of 
science the conclusion that Nature 1s no self-contained system which 
is its own razson d@étre. Behind all temporality and change there 
must be something unchanging and eternal which is the source 
of all things mutable and the explanation why they are as they 


From Nature to God 47 


are. In the first instance this sense of mutability gave rise only 
to a desire to know what is the permanent stuff of which what 
we call “ things” are only passing phases ; is it water, or vapour, 
or fire, or perhaps something different from them all? The one 
question which was primary for the earliest men of science was 
just this question about the stuff of which everything is made. 
‘To us it seems a very different thing to say “all things are water,” 
or to say “I believe in God,” but at bottom the quest after the 
stuff of which things are made is a first uncertain and half-blind 
step in the same direction as Aristotle’s famous argument, adopted 
by St. Thomas, for the existence of an ‘‘ unmoved Mover ” (who, 
remaining zmmotus in se, is the source of all the movement and life 
of this lower world), and as all the since familiar @ posteriori proofs 
of the existence of God. 

(2) It is but a further step in the same direction, which was 
soon taken by the early founders of science, when it is perceived 
that the persistence of an unchanged “stuff” is no complete 
explanation of the apparent facts of Nature, and that we have 
further to ask where the “‘ motion ”’ which is the life of all natural 
processes comes from, ‘This is the form in which the problem 
presented itself to Aristotle and his great follower St. Thomas. 
They believed that “ Nature is uniform ”’ in the sense that all the 
apparently irregular and lawless movements and changes with 
which life makes us familiar in the world around us issue from, 
and are the effects of, other movements (those of the “‘ heavens”), 
which are absolutely regular and uniform. On this view, the 
supreme dominant uniform movement in Nature is naturally 
identified with the apparently absolutely regular diurnal revolution 
of the whole stellar heavens round the earth. But Aristotle 
could not be content to accept the mere fact of this supposed 
revolution as an ultimate fact needing no further explanation. 
No motion explains itself, and we have therefore to ask the 
“ cause” or reason why the heavens should display this uniform 
continuous movement. ‘That reason Aristotle and his followers 
could only explain in the language of imaginative myth. Since 
nothing can set itself going, the movement which pervades the 
whole universe of Nature must be set going by something which is 
not itself set going by anything else ; not mutable and changeable 
therefore, but eternally selfsame and perfect, because it already is 
all that it can be, and so neither needs nor permits of development 


48 The Vindication of Religion 


of any kind. “From such a principle depends the whole 
heaven.” 1 And it follows from certain other presuppositions of 
Aristotle’s philosophy that this “ principle’ must be thought of 
as a perfect and living intelligence. “Thus in Aristotle’s formula- 
tion of the principles of natural science we reach the explicit 
result that Nature is in its inmost structure only explicable as 
something which depends on a perfect and eternal source of life, 
and this source is not itself Nature nor any part of Nature; the 
‘transcendence of God” has at last been explicitly affirmed as a 
truth suggested (Aristotle and St. ‘Thomas would say demonstrated) 
by the rational analysis of Nature herself. In principle their 
argument is that of every later form of the “ cosmological proof.” 

Meanwhile with the transference of interest from the question 
about the stuff of which things are made to the question of the 
source of their movement and life, another line of thought had 
become prominent. ‘The connection between organ and function 
is one which naturally struck the far-away founders of the science 
of biology. For living things show adaptation to their environ- 
ment, and the various organs of living beings show adaptation to 
the discharge of specific functions conducing to the maintenance 
of the individual or the kind. And again, the living creature is 
not equally adapted at all stages of its existence for the full dis- 
charge of these functions. We can see it adapting itself to one of 
the most important of these as we watch the series of changes it 
undergoes from infancy to puberty, and we see the same process 
more elaborately if we widen our horizon and study the pre-natal 
history of the embryo. From such considerations derives the 
further suggestion which ultimately becomes the “ argument from 
design.” Aristotle is convinced that the biological analogy may 
be applied to all processes of the organic or inorganic world. Every 
process has a final stage or “‘ end” in which it culminates, as the 
whole process of conception, birth, post-natal growth culminates 
in the existence of the physically adult animal ; and it is always 
the “end” to which a process is relative that determines the 
character of the earlier stages of the process. One seed grows into 
an apple-tree, another into a pear-tree, not because the two have 
been differently pulled or pushed, heated or cooled, wetted or dried, 
_ but because from the first the one was the sort of thing which was 
going, if not interfered with, to become an apple, the other the sort 

1 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 10726, 14. 


From Nature to God 49 


of thing which was going to become a pear. In the same way, 
there is definite order or plan everywhere in the structure of Nature, 
though Aristotle, unlike his master Plato, will not account for this 
orderliness by appeal to the conscious will and beneficent intention 
of his supreme Intelligence, but regards it rather, in the fashion of 
many modern biologists, as due to an unconscious and instinctive 
** quasi-purposiveness ”? in Nature herself.1 

Let us look back at this line of thought, out of which the 
familiar “ proofs of the existence of God” brought forward in 
popular works on Natural Theology have been developed, and 
ask ourselves what permanent value it retains for us to-day and 
how far it goes towards suggesting the real existence of a God 
whom a religious man can worship “in spirit and in truth.” 
We must not suppose that the thought itself is necessarily anti- 
quated because the language in which it is clothed strikes us as 
old-fashioned, or because those who gave it its first expression 
held certain views about the details of Nature’s structure (notably 
the geocentric conception in astronomy) which are now obsolete. 
It may very well be that the substitution of contemporary for 
antiquated views about the structure of the “ stellar universe” or 
the fixity of animal species will leave the force of the argument, 
whatever that force may be, unaffected. There are two criticisms 
in particular which it is as well to dispose of at once, since both 
sound plausible, and both, unless | am badly mistaken, go wide of 
the mark. 

(a) The point of the argument about the necessity of an 
‘unmoving source of motion”? must not be missed. We shall 
grasp it better if we remember that “‘ motion” in the vocabulary 
of Aristotle means change of every kind, so that what is being 
asserted is that there must be an unchanging cause or source of | 
change. Also, we must not fancy that we have disposed of the 
argument by saying that there is no scientific presumption that the 
series of changes which make up the life of Nature may not 
have been without a beginning and destined to have no end. 
St. Thomas, whose famous five proofs of the existence of God 
are all of them variations on the argument from “ motion,” 


‘ 


1 For an excellent summary account of the early Greek science referred to 
above see Burnet, Greek Philosophy : Thales to Plato, pp. 1-101 ; and for what 
has been said of Aristotle, W. D. Ross, Aristotle, chap. ili. pp. 62-111, 
chap. iv. pp. 112-128, and chap. vi. pp. 179-186 ; or, for a briefer summary, 
A. E. Taylor, Aristotle (Nelson & Sons, 1919), chaps. iii-iv. pp. 49-98. 


E 


50 The Vindication of Religion 


or, as we might say, the appeal to the principle of causality, was 
also the philosopher who created a sensation among the Christian 
thinkers of his day by insisting stiffly that, apart from the revela- 
tion given in Scripture, no reasons can be produced for holding 
that the world had a beginning or need have an end, as indeed 
Aristotle maintained that it has neither. “he dependence meant 
in the argument has nothing to do with succession in time. What 
is really meant is that our knowledge of any event in Nature is 
not complete until we know the full reason for the event. So 
long as you only know that A is so because B 1s so, but cannot tell 
why B is so, your knowledge is incomplete. It only becomes 
complete when you are in a position to say that ultimately A is so 
because Z is so, Z being something which Is its own raison d@’étre, 
and therefore such that it would be senseless to ask why Z is so. 
This at once leads to the conclusion that since we always have 
the right to ask about any event in Nature why that event is 
so, what are its conditions, the Z which is its own raison d’étre 
cannot itself belong to Nature. ‘The point of the reasoning is 
precisely that it is an argument from the fact that there is a 
“Nature” to the reality of a “Supernature,” and this point is 
unaffected by the question whether there ever was a beginning of 
time, or a time when there were no “ events.” 

Again, we must not be led off the track by the plausible 
but shallow remark that the whole problem about the “ cause of 
motion” arose from the unnecessary assumption that things were 
once at rest and afterwards began to move, so that you have only 
to start, as the modern physicist does, with a plurality of moving 
particles, or atoms, or electrons to get rid of the whole question. 
Nor would it be relevant to remark that modern physics knows of 
nosuch absolutely uniform motionsas those which Aristotle ascribes 
to “the heavens,” but only of more or less stable motions. If you 
start, for example, with a system of “ particles”? all in uniform 
motion, you have still to account for the rise of “ differential ” 
motions. If you start, as Epicurus tried to do, with a rain of 
particles all moving in the same direction and with the same relative 
velocities, you cannot explain why these particles ever came 
together to form complexes. If you prefer, with Herbert Spencer, 
to start with a strictly “homogeneous” nebula, you have to 
explain, as Spencer does not, how “ heterogeneity’ ever got in. 
You must have individual variety, as well as “ uniformity,” in 


From Nature to God 51 


whatever you choose to take as your postulated original data if 
you are to get out of the data a world like ours, which, as Mill 
truly says, is not only uniform but also infinitely various. Ex 
nihilo, nihil fit, and equally out of blank uniformity nothing fit 
but a uniformity equally blank. Even if, per impossibile, you could 
exclude all individual variety from the initial data of a system of 
natural science, you might properly be asked to account for this 
singular absence of variety, and a naturalistic account of it could 
only take the form of deriving it from some more ultimate state of 
things which was not marked by absolute “ uniformity.” Neither 
uniformity nor variety is self-explanatory ; whichever you start 
with, you are faced by the old dilemma. Either the initial data 
must simply be taken as brute “ fact,” for which there is no reason 
at all, or if there is a reason, it must be found outside Nature, in the 
** supernatural.” 

(2) Similarly, it does not dispose of the conception of natural 
processes as tending to an “end” and being at least “ quasi- 
purposive ” to say that the thought originated with men who knew 
nothing of “evolution” and falsely believed in the fixity of natural 
kinds. In point of fact the notion of the gradual development 
of existing natural species made its appearance at the very dawn of 
Greek science and was quite familiar to the great philosophers 
who gave the Greek tradition its definitive form, though they 
rejected it because, so far as they knew, the evidence of facts seemed 
against it. “The admission of the reality of the “evolution” of 
fresh species has, however, no direct bearing on the question of 
“ends in Nature”: it actually suggests the raising of that very 
question in a new form. Is there, or is there not, in organic 
evolution a general trend to the successive emergence of beings 
of increasing intelligence? And if so, must the process be sup- 
posed to have reached its culmination, so far as our planet is con- 
cerned, in man, or must man be regarded as a mere stage in the 
production of something better, a Pfeil der Sehnsucht nach dem 
Uebermenschen? ‘Vhese are questions which we are still asking 
ourselves to-day, and though the strict positivists among our 
scientific men may insist that they probably cannot be answered 
and that it is certainly not the business of natural science to answer 
them, it is at least curious that the scientific man not infrequently 
unconsciously betrays the fact that he has privately answered them 
to his own satisfaction by the very fact that he talks of “‘ evolution ” 


Be The Vindication of Religion 


' as ‘‘ progress,” a phrase which has no meaning except in relation 
to a goal or an end, or even, on occasion, permits himself to assume 
that what is ‘‘ more fully evolved,” z.e. comes later in the course 
of a development, must obviously be brighter and better than 
whatever went before it. “Thus the old problem is still with us 
and we cannot take it for granted that the old answers have lost 
their meaning or value. 

We may, for example, consider how the old-fashioned argu- 
ment from “ motion” to the “ unmoving” source of motion, 
when stated in its most general form, might still be urged even 
to-day. As we have seen, the argument is simply from the 
temporal, conditioned and mutable to something eternal, uncon- 
ditioned and immutable as its source. “The nerve of the whole 
reasoning is that every explanation of given facts or events involves 
bringing in reference to further unexplained facts; a complete 
explanation of anything, if we could obtain one, would therefore 
require that we should trace the fact explained back to something 
which contains its own explanation within itself, a something which 
is and is what it is in its own right ; such a something plainly is 
not an event or mere fact and therefore not included in “ Nature,” 
the complex of all events and facts, but “above”? Nature. Any 
man has a right to say, if he pleases, that he personally does not care 
to spend his time in exercising this mode of thinking, but would 
rather occupy himself in discovering fresh facts or fresh and 
hitherto unsuspected relations between facts. We need not blame 
him for that ; but we are entitled to ask those who are alive to the 
meaning of the old problem how they propose to deal with it, if 
they reject the inference from the unfinished and conditioned to 
the perfect and unconditioned. For my own part I can see only 
two alternatives, 

(1) One is to say, as Hume? did in his “ Dialogues on Natural 
Religion,” that, though every “ part ” of Nature may be dependent 
on other parts for its explanation, the whole system of facts or 
events which we call Nature may as a whole be self-explanatory ; 
the “world” itself may be that “necessary being” of which 
philosophers and divines have spoken. In other words, a complex 
system in which every member, taken singly, is temporal, may 
as a complex be eternal ; every member may be incomplete, but 


1 Or rather, the sceptical critic in the Dialogues. We cannot be sure of 
Hume’s own agreement with the suggestion. 


From Nature to God 53 


the whole may be complete ; every member mutable, but the whole 
unchanging. “Ihus, as many philosophers of yesterday and to-day 
have said, the “ eternal” would just be the temporal fully under- 
stood ; there would be no contrast between Nature and “ super- 
nature,” but only between “ Nature apprehended as a whole ” 
and Nature as we have to apprehend her fragmentarily. The 
thought is a pretty one, but I cannot believe that it will stand 
criticism. ‘The very first question suggested by the sort of formula 
I have just quoted is whether it is not actually self-contradictory 
to call Nature a “ whole” at all; if it is, there can clearly be 
no apprehending of Nature as something which she is not. And 
I think it quite clear that Nature, in the sense of the complex of 
events, Is, in virtue of her very structure, something incomplete and 
not a true whole. 1 can explain the point best, perhaps, by an 
absurdly simplified example. Let us suppose that Nature con- 
sists of just four constituents, A, B, C, D. We are supposed to 
“explain” the behaviour of A by the structure of B, C, and D, 
and the interaction of B, C, and D with A, and similarly with 
each of the other three constituents. Obviously enough, with a 
set of “general laws” of some kind we can “explain” why 
A behaves as it does, if we know all about its structure and the 
structures of B, C, and D. But it still remains entirely unex- 
plained why A should be there at all, or why, if it is there, it should 
have B, C, and D as its neighbours rather than others with 
a totally different structure of theirown. ‘That this is so has to be 
accepted as a “ brute”’ fact which is not explained nor yet self- 
explanatory. “Thus no amount of knowledge of “ natural laws ”’ 
will explain the present actual state of Nature unless we also assume 
it as a brute fact that the distribution of “‘ matter ” and “‘ energy ” 
(or whatever else we take as the ultimates of our system of physics) 
a hundred millions of yearsago was such and such. With the same 
“laws” and a different “initial” distribution the actual state of 
the world to-day would be very different. “‘ Collocations,” to use 
Mill’s terminology, as well as “‘ laws of causation”’ have to enter 
into all our scientific explanations. And though it is true that as 
our knowledge grows, we are continually learning to assign causes 
for particular “ collocations”’ originally accepted as bare facts, 
we only succeed in doing so by falling back on other anterior 
“ collocations”” which we have equally to take as unexplained 
bare facts. As M. Meyerson puts it, we only get rid of the 


54 The Vindication of Religion’ 


‘inexplicable ” at one point at the price of introducing it again 
somewhere else. Now any attempt to treat the complex of facts 
we call Nature as something which will be found to be more 
nearly self-explanatory the more of them we know, and would 
become quite self-explanatory if we only knew them all, amounts 
to an attempt to eliminate “bare fact” altogether, and reduce 
Nature simply to a complex of “laws.” In other words, it is an 
attempt to manufacture particular existents out of mere universals, 
and therefore must end in failure. And the actual progress of 
science bears witness to this. [he more we advance to the 
reduction of the visible face of Nature to “law,”’ the more, not 
the less, complex and bafHing become the mass of characters which 
we have to attribute as bare unexplained fact to our ultimate 
constituents. An electron is a much stiffer dose of “‘ brute ”’ fact 
than one of Newton’s hard impenetrable corpuscles. 

‘Thus we may fairly say that to surrender ourselves to the 
suggestion that Nature, if we only knew enough, would be seen 
to be a self-explanatory whole is to follow a will-of-the-wisp. 
The duality of “law” and “ fact”? cannot be eliminated from 
natural science, and this means that in the end either Nature is 
not explicable at all, or, if she is, the explanation has to be sought ” 
in something “ outside’ on which Nature depends. 

(11) Hence it is not surprising that both among men of science 
and among philosophers there is just now a strong tendency 
to give up the attempt to “explain”? Nature completely and to 
fall back on an “ ultimate pluralism.” ‘This means that we resign _ 
ourselves to the admission of the duality of “law” and “ fact.” f 
We assume that there are a plurality of ultimately different con- 
stituents of Nature, each with its own specific character and way. 
of behaving, and our business in explanation is simply to show how 
to account for the world as we find it by the fewest and simplest 
laws of interaction between these different constituents. In other 
words we give up altogether the attempt to “ explain Nature” ; 
we are content to “‘ explain ”’ lesser “‘ parts’ of Nature in terms of 
their specific character and their relations to other “‘ parts.” “This 
is clearly a completely justified mode of procedure for a man of 
science who is aiming at the solution of some particular problem 
such as, e.g., the discovery of the conditions under which a per- 
manent new “species” originates and maintains itself. But it 
is quite another question whether “‘ ultimate pluralism” can be 


' From Nature to God Ets 


4 


the last word of a “ philosophy of Nature.” If you take it so, 
it really means that in the end you have no reason to assign why 
there should be just so many ultimate constituents of “‘ Nature ”’ 
as you say there are, or why they should have the particular 
characters you say they have, except that ‘“‘it happens to be the 
case.” You are acquiescing in unexplained brute fact, not because 
in the present state of knowledge you do not see your way to do 
better, but on the plea that there is and can be no explanation. 
You are putting unintelligible mystery at the very heart of 
reality. 

Perhaps it may be rejoined, “* And why should we not acknow- 
ledge this, seeing that, whether we like it or not, we must come 
to this in the end?” Well, at least it may be retorted that to 
acquiesce in such a “ final inexplicability ” as final means that you 
have denied the yalidity of the very assumption on which all science 
is built. All through the history of scientific advance it has been 
taken for granted that we are not to acquiesce in inexplicable brute 
fact ; whenever we come across what, with our present light, has 
to be accepted as merely fact, we have a right to ask for further 
explanation, and should be false to the spirit of science if we did not. 
‘Thus we inevitably reach the conclusion that either the very 
principles which inspire and guide scientific inquiry itself are an 
illusion, or Nature itself must be dependent on some reality which 
is self-explanatory, and therefore not Nature nor any part of 
Nature, but, in the strict sense of the words, “ supernatural” or 
“* transcendent ’’—transcendent, that is, in the sense that in it there 
is overcome that duality of “law” and “ fact”? which is char- 
acteristic of Nature and every part of Nature. It is not “ brute” 
fact, and yet it is not an abstract universal law or complex of such 
laws, buta really existing self-luminous Being, such that you could 
see, if you only apprehended its true character, that to have that 
character and to be are the same thing. ‘This is the way in which 
Nature, as it seems to me, inevitably points beyond itself as the 
temporal and mutable to an “other” which is eternal and 
immutable. 

‘The “argument from design,” rightly stated, seems to me to 
have a similar force. In our small region of the universe, at any 
rate, we can see for ourselves that the course of development has 
taken a very remarkable direction. It has led up, through a line 
of species which have had to adapt themselves to their “ environ- 


? 


56 The Vindication of Religion 


ment,” to the emergence of an intelligent and moral creature 
who adapts his environment to himself and even to his ideals of 
what he is not yet but ought to be and hopes to be, and the environ- 
ment of the species he ‘‘ domesticates ” to his own purposes. It is 
increasingly true as we pass from savagery to civilisation that men 
make their own environment and are not made by it. On the 
face of it, it at least looks as though, so far as our own region 
of Nature is concerned, this emergence of creatures who, being 
intelligent and moral, freely shape their own environment, is the 
culminating stage beyond which the development of new species 
cannot go, and that the. whole anterior history of the inorganic 
and prehuman organic development of our planet has been con- 
trolled throughout by the requirements of this “end.” I know 
it will be said that we have no proof that the same thing has 
happened anywhere else in the “ universe” ; our planet may, for 
all we know, not be a fair “average sample.” Again, it may be 
urged that there are reasons for thinking that the history of our 
planet will end in its unfitness first to contain intelligent human 
life, and then to contain any form of life ; consequently man and 
all his works cannot be the “‘ end of evolution ”’ even on this earth, 
but must be a mere passing phase in a process which is controlled 
by no “ends,” and is therefore in no true sense of the term a 
“history.” One would not wish to shirk any of these objections, 
and yet it is, I think, not too much to say that, to anyone but a 
fanatical atheist, it will always appear preposterous to regard the 
production of moral and intelligent masters of Nature as a mere 
by-product or accident of “evolution on this planet,” or indeed 
as anything but the “end” which has all along determined the 
process. “ Nature,” we might say, really does show a “ trend” 
or “bias” to the production of intelligence surpassing her own. 
And further, we must remember that if there is such a “‘ trend,” 
it will be necessary to include under the head of the processes it 
determines, not only the emergence of the various forms of pre- 
human life on our earth, but the “ geological ” preparation of the 
earth itself to be the scene of the ensuing development and the 
pre-preparation during the still remoter astronomical period of 
the formation of our solar system. ‘Thus to recognise so-called 
‘* quasi-purposiveness ”’ even in the course development has followed 
on “one tiny planet” inevitably involves finding the same quasi- 
purposiveness on a vaster scale, throughout the whole indefinite 


From Nature to God i) 


range of natural events.1_ “he more we are alive to this simple 
consideration that “ de facto determination by ends,” once admitted 
anywhere in Nature, cannot be confined to any single region or 
part of Nature but inevitably penetrates everywhere, the more 
impossible it becomes to be satisfied with such expressions as 
“* quasi-purposive”’ or “‘ de facto” teleology and the like. 

The vaster the dominating “ plan,” the more vividly must it 
suggest a planning and guiding intelligence. Nature herself, we 
may suppose (if we allow ourselves to use the miserably misleading 
personification at all), may, as has been said, be like a sleep-walker 
who executes trains of purposive acts without knowing that he does 
so. But the plan itself cannot have originated without a wakeful 
and alert intelligence. (Even the sleep-walker, as we know, only 
performs trains of acts adjusted to ends in his sleep because he has 
first learnt consciously to adjust means to ends in his waking life.) 
Let “ Nature” be as unconscious as you please : the stronger is 
the suggestion that the marvellous, and often comical, “ adapta- 
tions” of a highly complex character which pervade ‘‘ Nature ” 
are the “ artifices ” of one who neither slumbers nor sleeps. What 
look like “accidents”? may very well be deliberate designs of a 
master artist, or, as Plato says, contrary to the proverbial expression, 
it may be Nature which “imitates” Art. I will not attempt to 
estimate the amount of probative force which ought to be ascribed 
to these suggestions. It is enough for my purpose that they are 
there, and that their drawing has notoriously been felt with special 


1 This is not to say that man is the sole or chief end of Creation, a proposition 
which, in fact, no orthodox Christian theologian would make ; at least not 
without very careful explanations and reservations. But it is worth while to 
remind ourselves that there is nothing in itself absurd in the view of the Middle 
Ages that human history is the central interest, the main plot, of the drama 
of the universe. For all we snow, our planet may be the only home of 
beings “‘ with immortal souls to be saved.” If it is, then the fact that it is 
“tiny” is obviously irrelevant as a reason for denying its central importance. 
When I reflect on the capacities of a man for good and evil, I see nothing 
ludicrous in the supposition, which, however, I am not making, that it might 
have been the chief purpose of a wise Creator in making the solar system that 
the sun should give us men light and warmth. 

All I seriously wish to insist on, however, is that to let in ‘ purpose ’ 
anywhere into natural fact means letting it in everywhere. Give it an inch 
and it will rightly take infiniteroom. (This asa reply to the arguments based 
on the allegation that we cannot regard the part of things with which we are 
acquainted as a “‘ fair average sample.” What we are acquainted with is not 
a definite isolated “‘ part’’ or “‘ region,’’ but has ramifications which extend 
indefinitely far.) 


=4 


58 The Vindication of Religion 


intensity by so many of those who are best acquainted with the 
facts, even where their metaphysical bias has led them to with- 
hold assent. 

The spectacle of movement and change which we call 
‘“‘'Nature”’ thus at least suggests the presence of some “ tran- 
scendent’’ source of movement and change which is strictly 
eternal, being above all mutability and having no succession of 
phases within itself, and is omnipotent, since it is itself the source 
of all “becoming.” The orderliness and apparent purposive 
“trend towards intelligence ” in Nature similarly at least suggest 
that this omnipotent and eternal “supernatural” is a wholly 
intelligent Will. “Che force of the suggestion seems to have 
been felt by man in every stage of his history so far as that history 
is accessible to us. It is noteworthy that the more intimate our 
inquiries become with the “savages”? who by our estimate stand 
nearest to a pre-civilised condition, the clearer it becomes that 
even those of them who have been set down on first acquaintance 
as wholly “ godless” turn out, on better knowledge, to have their 
traditions of a “ maker of life’’ and the like. And at the same 
time we are not dealing with anything which can be set aside as a 
“relic of primitive savagery.” Our conception of “ One God the 
Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth,” has come to us 
from two immediate sources, Greek science and philosophy and 
Hebrew prophecy, and both science and prophecy, as cannot be 
too often repeated, began by a complete break with the “ primitive 
superstition ”’ of the past. Belief in God as the source of Nature 
is thus a “‘ survival of primitive superstition ”’ only in the same sense 
in which the same could be said of Hollct in causality or, if you 
prefer it, in “ laws of uniform sequence,” 

So far, however, our attention has been easiitl? to ee 
Bonaventura calls the “things around and below us,” and they 
clearly have taken us a very little way indeed in the direction of 
suggesting the reality of a God who is God in the religious man’s 
sense, a being who can be loved and trusted utterly and without 
qualification. In the creatures we may have discerned the 
‘footprints’ of a Creator, but we have seen no token of his 
“likeness.” Perhaps, if we turn our attention to “‘ what is 


1 It is significant that Witgenstein’s penetrating though unbalanced 
Tractatus logico-philosophicus definitely <dentifies “‘ superstition ” with the belief 
in causality. Op. cit. 5, 1361. | 


From Man to God 59 


within us,” we may find in our own moral being the suggestion 
of something further. We may get at any rate a hint that the 
creative intelligence we divine behind all things has also the 
character which makes adoration, love, and trust, as distinguished 
from mere wonder, possible. In man’s moral being we may dis- 
cern not the mere “ footprints’ but the “‘ image ” of God. 


b] 


Il. From Man tro Gop 


With the line of thought we have now to consider we can deal 
more briefly. If meditation on the creatures in general leads us 
by a circuitous route and an obscure light to the thought of their 
Maker, meditation on the moral being of man suggests God more 
directly and much less obscurely. For we are now starting a 
fresh stage of the “‘ ascent” from a higher level, and it is with the 
road to God as with Dante’s purgatorial mountain: the higher 
you have mounted, the easier it is to rise higher still. In Nature 
we at best see God under a disguise so heavy that it allows us 
to discern little more than that someone is there; within 
our own moral life we see Him with the mask, so to say, half 
fallen off. 

Once more the general character of the ascent is the same ; 
we begin with the temporal, and in a certain sense the natural, ’ 
to end in the eternal and supernatural. But the line of thought, 
though kindred to the first, is independent, so that Nature and Man 
are like two witnesses who have had no opportunity of collusion. 
The clearer and more emphatic testimony of the latter to what 
was testified less unambiguously by the former affords a further 
confirmation of our hope that we have read the suggestions of 
Nature, so ambiguous in their purport, aright. 

A single sentence will be enough to show both the analogy 
of the argument from Man to God with the argument from 
Nature and the real independence of the two lines of testimony. 
Nature, we have urged, on inspection points to the “‘ supernatural ”’ 
beyond itself as its own presupposition ; if we look within our- 
selves we shall see that in man “ Nature” and “ supernature ” 
meet; he has both within his own heart, and is a denizen 
at once of the temporal and of the eternal. He has not, like 
the animals, so far as we can judge of their inner life, one 
“environment” to which he must adapt himself but two, 


60 The Vindication of Religion 


a secular and an eternal. Because he is designed ultimately to be 
at home with God in the eternal, he can never be really at home 
in this world, but at best is, like Abraham, a pilgrim to a promised 
but unseen land; at worst, like Cain, an aimless fugitive and 
wanderer on the face of the earth. The very “image” of his 
Maker which has been stamped on him is not only a sign of his 
rightful domination over the creatures ; it is also “the mark of 
Cain” from which all creatures shrink. Hence among all the 
creatures, many of whom are comic enough, man is alone in being 
tragic. His life, at the very best, is a tragi-comedy ; at the worst, 
it is stark tragedy. And naturally enough this is so; for, if man 
has only the ‘‘ environment” which is common to him with the 
beasts of the field, his whole life is no more than a perpetual 
attempt to find a rational solution of an equation all whose roots 
are surds. He can only achieve adjustment to one of his two 
*“‘ environments ” by sacrifices of adjustment to the other ; he can 
no more be equally in tune with the eternal and the secular at 
once than a piano can be exactly in tune for all keys. In practice 
we know how the difficulty is apparently solved in the best human 
lives ; it is solved by cultivating our earthly attachments and yet 
also practising a high detachment, not “setting our hearts” too 
much on the best of temporal goods, since “ the best in this kind 
are but shadows,” “using” the creatures, but always in the 
remembrance that the time will come when we can use them 
no more, loving them but loving them ordinate, with care not to 
lose our hearts to any of them. Wise men do not need to be 
reminded that the deliberate voluntary refusal of real good things 
is necessary, aS a protection against the over-valuation of the 
secular, in any life they count worth living. And yet wise men 
know also that the renunciation of real good which they recom- 
mend is not recommended for the mere sake of being without 
““ go0d.”” Good is always renounced for the sake of some “ better 
good.” But the “ better good ”’ plainly cannot be any of the good 
things of this secular existence. For there is none of them what- 
ever which it may not be a duty to renounce for some man and at 
some time. 

I do not mean merely that occasions demand the sacrifice 
of the sort of thing the “average sensual man” calls good— 
comfort, wealth, influence, rank and the like. For no serious 
moralist would dream of regarding any of these as more, at best, 


From Man to God 61 


than very inferior goods. I mean that the same thing holds true 
of the very things to which men of nobler mould are ready to 
sacrifice these obvious and secondary goods. For example, there 
are few, if any, earthly goods to compare with our personal 
affections. Yet a man must be prepared to sacrifice all his 
personal affections in the service of his country, or for what he 
honestly believes to be the one Church of God. But there are 
things to which the greatest lover of his country or his Church 
must be prepared in turn to sacrifice what lies so near his heart. 
I may die for my country, I may, as so many a fighting man does, 
leave wife and young children to run the extreme hazards of 
fortune, but I must not purchase peace and safety for this country 
I love so much by procuring the privy murder of a dangerous and 
remorseless enemy. I may give my body to be burned for my 
faith, I may leave my little ones to beg their bread for its sake, 
but I must not help it in its need by a fraud or a forgery. It 
may be argued that for the good of the human race I ought to 
be prepared to sacrifice the very independence of my native land, 
but for no advantage to the whole body of mankind may I insult 
justice by knowingly giving sentence or verdict against the 
innocent. If these things are not true, the whole foundation of 
our morality is dissolved ; if they are true, the greatest good, to 
which I must at need be prepared to sacrifice everything else, 
must be something which cannot even be appraised in the terms 
of a secular arithmetic, something incommensurable with the 
‘* welfare” of Church and State or even of the whole human race. 
If it is to be had in fruition at all, it must be had where the secular 
environment has finally and for ever fallen away, “ yonder” as 
the Neo-Platonist would say, “in heaven” as the ordinary 
Christian says. If this world of time and passage were really our 
home and our only home, I own I should find it impossible to 
justify such a complete surrender of all temporal good as that 
I have spoken of ; yet it is certain that the sacrifice is no more 
than what is demanded, when the need arises, by the most familiar 
principles of morality. Whoever says “ ought,” meaning “ ought,” 
is in the act bearing witness to the supernatural and supra-temporal 
as the destined home of man. No doubt we should all admit that 
there are very many rules of our conventional morality which 
are not of unconditional and universal obligation ; we “‘ ought” 
to conform to them under certain specified and understood 


62 The Vindication of Religion 


conditions. I ought to be generous only when I have first satis- 
fied the just claims of my creditors, just as I ought to abstain 
from redressing grievances with the high hand when society 
supplies me with the machinery for getting them redressed by 
the law. But whoever says “ought” at all, must mean that at 
least when the requisite conditions are fulfilled the obligation is 
absolute. “There may be occasions when it is not binding on me 
to speak the truth to a questioner, but if there is one single occa- 
sion on which I ought to speak the truth, I ought to speak it 
then, “ though the sky should fall.” 

Now, if there ever_is a single occasion on which we ought to 
speak the truth, or to do anything else, “‘ at all costs’ as we say, 
what is the good in the name of which this unconditional de- 
mand is made of me? It cannot be any secular good that can 
be named, my own health or prosperity or life, nor even the 
prosperity and pleasurable existence of mankind. For I can 
never, since the consequences of my act are endless and un- 
foreseeable, be sure that I may not be endangering these very 
goods by my act, and yet I am sure that the act is one which I ought 
todo. No doubt, you may fall back upon probability as the guide 
of life and say, “ 1 ought to do this act because it seems to me most 
likely to conduce to the temporal well-being of myself, my family, 
my nation, or my kind.” And in practice these are, no doubt, 
the sort of considerations by which we are constantly influenced. 
But it should be clear that they cannot be the ultimate grounds 
of obligation, unless all morality is to be reduced to the status of 
a convenient illusion, To say that the ultimate ground of an 
obligation is the mere fact that a man thinks he would further such 
a concrete tangible end by his act involves the consequence that 
no man is bound to do any act unless he thinks it will have these 
results, and that he may do anything he pleases so long as he thinks 
it will have them. At heart, I believe, even the writers who 
go furthest in professing to accept these conclusions do themselves 
a moral injustice. JI am convinced that there is not one of them, 
whatever he may hold in theory, who would not in practice “ draw 
the line” somewhere and say, “ This thing I will not do, what- 
ever the cost may be to myself or to anyone else or to everyone.” 
Now an obligation wholly independent of all temporal “ conse- 
quences ” clearly cannot have its justification in the temporal, nor 
oblige any creature constructed to find his good wholly in the 


From Man to God 62 


temporal. Only toa being who has.in his structure the adaptation 
to the eternal can you significantly say “ You ought.” 1 

It will be seen that the thought on which we have dwelt 
in the last paragraph is one of the underlying fundamental themes 
of Kant’s principal ethical treatise, the “ Critique of Practical 
Reason.” It is characteristic of Kant that, wrongly as | think, 
he wholly distrusted the suggestions of the “supernatural”’ to 
be derived from the contemplation of Nature itself, and that, 
from an exaggerated dread of unregulated fanaticism and super- 
stition, characteristic of his century, he was all but blind to the 
third source of suggestion of which we have yet to speak. Hence 
with him it is our knowledge of our own moral being, as creatures 
who have unconditional obligations, which has to bear the whole 
weight of the argument. Here, I own, he seems to me to be 
definitely wrong. The full force of the vindication of religion 
cannot be felt unless we recognise that its weight is supported not 
by one strand only but by a cord of three intertwined strands 3 
we need to integrate Bonaventura and Thomas and Butler with 
Kant to appreciate the real strength of the believer’s position. 
Yet Kant seems to me unquestionably right as far as this. Even 
were there nothing else to suggest to us that we are denizens at once 
of a natural and temporal and of a supernatural and eternal world, 
the revelation of our own inner division against ourselves afforded 
by Conscience, duly meditated, is enough to bear the strain. Or, 
to make my point rather differently, I would urge that of all the 
philosophical thinkers who have concerned themselves with the 
life of man as a moral being, the two who stand out, even in the 
estimation of those who dissent from them, as the great undying 
moralists of literature, Plato and Kant, are just the two who have 
insisted most vigorously on what the secularly-minded call, by 
way of depreciation, the “dualism” of “this world” and the 
“other world,” or, in Kantian language, of “‘ man as (natural) 
phenomenon” and “ man as (supernatural) reality.” “To deny 
the reality of this antithesis is to eviscerate morality. 

We see this at once if we compare Kant, for example, with 
Hume, or Plato with Aristotle. It is so obvious that Plato and 
Kant really “care” about moral practice and Aristotle and Hume 
do not care, or do not care as much as they ought. In Hume’s 


1 I owe the expression to a report of a recent utterance of some Roman 
Catholic divine. I regret that I cannot give the precise reference. 


64 The Vindication of Religion 


hands moral goodness is put so completely on a level with mere 
respectability that our approval of virtue and disapproval of vice is 
said in so many words to be at bottom one in kind with our prefer- 
ence of a well-dressed man toa badly-dressed. Aristotle cares more 
than this. Hereduces moral goodness to the discharge of the duties 
of a good citizen, family man, and neighbour in this secular life, and 
is careful to insist that these obligations are not to be shirked. But 
when he comes to speak of the true happiness of man and the kind 
of life which he lives “as a being with something divine in him,” 
we find that the life of this “ divine’’ part means nothing more 
than the promotion of science. ‘To live near to God means to 
him not justice, mercy, and humility, as it does to Plato and the 
Hebrew prophets, but to be a metaphysician, a physicist, and an 
astronomer. Justice, mercy, and humility are to be practised, but 
only for a secular purpose, in order that the man of science may 
have an orderly and quiet social “ environment” and so be free, 
as he would not be if he had to contend with disorderly passions 
in himself or his neighbours, to give the maximum of time and 
interest to the things which really matter. We cannot say of 
Hume, nor of Aristotle, nor indeed of any moralist who makes 
morality merely a matter of right social adjustments in this temporal 
world, what you can say of Plato or Kant, beatz qui esuriunt et 
sittunt gustitiam. ‘‘ Otherworldliness”’ is as characteristic of the 
greatest theoretical moralists as it is of all the noblest livers, what- 
ever their professed theories may be. 

‘The point is again strikingly illustrated by a difficulty raised 
by a moralist who was also a noble liver in our own times, 
T. H. Green. He rightly makes it a fatal objection to the current 
utilitarianism of his day that pleasure or gratified feeling, which 
according to the utilitarian theorists is the only good, is not a moral 
good—.e. their view is that the end for which the good man acts 
is the same as that for which the bad man acts. ‘The difference 
between the good and the bad man is made a mere difference of 
the manner by which each pursues an end which is common to 
him with the other ; the object sought by both is the same. “To 
escape this reduction of virtue to prudent calculation of means 
Green goes on to say that true good means “ moral good,” “ what 
satisfies a moral nature as such.” ‘This seems at first sight to 
leave us with a vicious circle. A moral agent is one who aims 
at “true” good, but “true” good again can only be defined as 


From Man to God 65 


“the sort of thing a moral agent as such aims at.”’ Green’s way 
of escape from this circle is to add that we do not know in its fulness 
what this true good is, but we can see at any rate that the belief 
that it really zs has been the source and impulse of all attempts to 
obtain it, and we can learn from the history of the past along 
what lines progress towards its attainment has been made.1 

Now these observations, so far as they go, are manifestly sound. 
It is plain that moral progress would be arrested if it were not at 
every stage inspired by an aspiration towards what has not yet _ 
been attained, as Herbert Spencer frankly stated that the very 
notion of “‘ ought ” would vanish from a “ fully evolved ” society— 
that is, that such a society would have ceased to be a moral com- 
munity. It is equally plain that none of us has a “clear and 
distinct idea’ of what it would be like to be a just man made 
perfect. We all walk by faith, not by sight. “The conclusion 
which Green clearly ought to have drawn from his premises is 
that, since the goal of the moral life cannot by any possibility be 
attained under temporal conditions, and yet its reality (which, in 
the case of an ideal which ought to inspire and regulate all our 
conduct, must mean its real attainability by ws) 1s the necessary 
condition that the inspiration to progress shall not fail, our final 
destiny must lie in the non-temporal. But when Green comes 
to face this issue, his fear of incurring the reproach of “ other- 
worldliness”? is so great that he merely equivocates about the 
“last things,” and proves false to what was clearly his own inmost 
faith.? 

Of course we could put the thought I am labouring in many 
other ways. We might, for example, say that it cannot be in- 
significant that man alone of all creatures of whom we know has 
a sense of sin. Animals, in a wild state, seem to show nothing of © 


1 T. H. Green’s Prolegomena to Ethics, bk. iii. chap. i. §§. 171-179. 

2 See the shuffling language, op. cit., bk. iii. chap. ii. §§. 187-189, where 
Green simply runs away under a cloud of words from his own emphatic state- 
ment (§ 18s) that moral progress can only mean progress of personal character 
to personal character. The same terror of being thought “ otherworldly ”’ 
by secularists is much more marked in Green’s illustrious disciple, the late 
Professor Bosanquet. To my own mind it absolutely ruins his philosophy 
on its ethical side, besides making him a very unsafe guide as an interpreter of 
Plato. A Christian, or even a Platonist philosopher, should make light of the 
charge of “‘otherworldliness” ; ‘Let us therefore go forth unto him without 
the camp, bearing his reproach. For here we have no continuing city, but 
we seek one to come.”” One might have a worse motto as a moralist than 2a t7¢ 
Tape BoArye. 

F 


66 The Vindication of Religion 


the kind. Mr. Bradley, it is true, once suggested that you might 
find the beginnings of moral self-condemnation in the sulky 
brooding of a tiger which has missed its spring. But I think there 
is here a confusion which was long ago exposed by Butler in his | 
distinction between the feelings of a man who has been disappointed 
of an expectation and one who knows he has deservedly suffered 
for his own misdoing. ‘“‘In the one case, what our thoughts fix 
upon is our condition : in the other, our conduct.” + Dogs which 
have been well brought up are thought by some observers to be 
capable of ‘‘ knowing they are doing wrong” and to feel ashamed 
of it. I cannot pronounce any opinion on the soundness of this 
as psychology, but supposing the fact to be so, it is important to 
remember that these dogs have been brought up by man, and that 
any approach they make to a sense of wrongdoing, as distinct 
from a shrinking from expected unpleasant consequences, is pre- 
sumably an effect of their domestication by a being who Is already 
moral, ‘The alleged fact proves nothing as to the presence of a 
rudimentary sense of sin in an animal in the “ state of nature,” any 
more than the shameless sexual irregularities of our domesticated 
animals prove that before their domestication they had not their 
special pairing seasons, In any case the human sense of sin has 
peculiarities of its own which no sound psychologist can afford to 
neglect. ‘There is, first of all, its special poignancy and indeli- 
bility. As to the poignancy, any one who has felt the sword- 
point of guilt knows, without my telling him, how it pierces to the 
very marrow. ‘The indelibility, too, must not be overlooked. 
‘The dog which has disgraced itself does, perhaps, for the time being, 
feel shame, as well as fear of an impending unpleasant consequence. 
But when the temporary disgrace is once fairly over, there is no 
indication that the dog which has disgraced itself and been punished 
is troubled again about its past “‘ misdoings.” Its past self is dead 
and buried. Not so with us. Ifa man has a high standard and 
a sensitive conscience, it is not enough for him that he is honestly 
repentant for his past misdoings and has long honourably striven, 
perhaps with full success, to “‘ make good,” but the remembrance 
loses little, if anything, of its bitterness. A sincere Christian may 
be satisfied that he has received the remission of his sins and may 
trust with assurance that he will be preserved by grace from falling 
back to them, but he does not forget them ; the remembrance and 
1 Dissertation upon the Nature of Virtue (ed. W. R. Matthews, § 6). 


From Man to God 67 


the shame remain, like disfiguring and aching scars which testify 
to ancient wounds. For us, the past may be dead, but it is not yet 
the dead and buried past it seems to be for the animals. ‘There ts 
the keen sense of “ pollution” by our wrongdoing, testified to 
by the world-wide practice of trying to get rid of the pollution 
by ablution, sprinkling with the blood of sacrificial victims and 
similar rites, exactly as we might try to get rid of a bodily defilement 
or infection. Even where we cannot point to any member of 
human society who has suffered hurt or infringement of rights by 
the sinful act, the feeling still persists that a sin is a wrong done 
to a person of infinite sanctity, a personal affront, an act of 
lése-majesté. We may no longer be convinced by the old argu- 
ment that it is just that the least sin should be visited with un- 
ending torments, because, as an act of treason against an infinite 
Deity, it is always an infinite treason. But I believe that we do 
still feel about what a third human party might call our peccadilloes 
that, trivial as they look, they are infinitely polluting. It is the 
“saint” not the “ notorious evil-doer” to whom it most readily 
occurs to cry “‘ Woe is me, for J am unclean.” Kant expresses 
the same thought in a different way, which is all the more remark- 
able from his violent prejudice against “‘ anthropomorphic” con- 
ceptions. According to him the one and only specific moral 
feeling is reverence for the sanctity of the moral law as such. 
He will not say reverence for a divine Author of the moral law ; 
that would be “ anthropomorphism.” Yet when he is trying to 
make it quite clear what this feeling of reverence for the majesty 
of the law is, he observes that reverence is, properly speaking, 
a feeling which is only evoked by moral character, and compares it 
with the feeling of constraint an ordinary man would have if he 
were suddenly called on to enter the presence of a “ superior,” 
the sort of feeling you or I might have if we were informed that 
in an hour or two we should have to dine with the King or the 
Pope. ‘The natural inference, as Professor Clement Webb has 
remarked, is that the reverence we feel for the moral law really is 
an attitude towards an unseen being of transcendent purity and 
holiness of character. 

Or the whole argument may be once more put in the form in 
which we find it in the great scholastic thinkers, a form which 
goes back in the end to Plato and Augustine. Man, like all living 

1 Divine Personality and Human Life, Lecture V, especially pp. 125-126. 


68 The Vindication of Religion 


creatures, is first and last a conative and striving being. He has 
a “‘ good ” which he can consciously enjoy and without the fruition 
of which he is discontented and unhappy. So too with his animal 
congeners. But the good which secures content to them is one for 
which the conditions of secular existence, when favourable, make 
adequate provision, An animal wants food, shelter, warmth, 
movement, repose, the gratification of its pairing or parental 
instincts when they are aroused ; it usually also wants to be “ let 
alone,” to be left unthwarted in its movements, and when these 
wants are gratified it is content and as happy as an animal can be. 
Man has all these wants and many more created by his possession 
of intelligence. He wants, for instance, to secure himself against 
the uncertainties of to-morrow, hence his desire of wealth, power, 
command of the forces of Nature. He wants to provide himself 
with sources of interest and excitement, one chief reason for the 
attractiveness of the curious game of politics. He wants to know 
in order to satisfy his curiosity, to surround himself with things 
of beauty or to make them for himself, he wants to feel himself 
beloved and so forth. Yet the singular thing is that none of these 
satisfactions, singly or together, really satisfy him. He is unhappy 
in deprivation and wearied in fruition by satiety. And even where 
there is neither deprivation nor satiety he is discontented with the 
best things time has to give him, because they will not last. 

Most of us would perhaps say that the purest content and happi- 
ness earth has to give us is that which comes from the known 
possession of the life-long personal affection of a friend or a wife 
or ason, Yet there is something which forbids us to be really 
content and at peace even in such possession. However well 
we may love and be loved, there is always some barrier between 
the self and the second self in another. A man always knows at 
once too much and too little of the wife of his bosom and she of 
him. Again in these dearest intimacies we are never really assured 
against the changes and estrangements time brings with it. I may 
change subtly and imperceptibly or my other self may change, and 
by and by one awakens with a heartache to the perception that the 
old confidence and love are a thing of the past. And finally, if 
none of these things happen, weall know that when hands have been 
joined in wedlock or in friendship, they will be unjoined again by 
death. ‘‘ One shall be taken and the other shall be left ” is the 
irrevocable sentence on the dearest of all earthly ties. There is 


From Man to God 69 


thus a drop of poison in the chalice of the fullest secular happiness— 
a poison infused, a Christian would say, by the heavenly Lover of 
all souls to prevent us from finding abiding and complete happiness 
outside Himself. Nothing seems plainer than this, that if true 
peace and content are to be found by man at all, they cannot be 
found in anything temporal or secular. “They must spring from 
a conscious intimate possession of personal union of heart and will 
with a being who knows us through and through as no man knows 
another, or even himself, who contains within Him an inexhaus- 
tible wealth of being which excludes all risk of satiety, who is utterly 
eternal and abiding and therefore can never change or fail. “The 
final peace of man, if it is to be found at all, can only be found in 
a God who is eternal by nature and imparts by His grace a 
“‘ participated” eternity of perseverance to the other party to the 
relation. Our true, final good thus lies not in the world of Nature, 
but in that ‘“‘other-world” of the supernatural which every- 
where interpenetrates and sustains Nature and yet absolutely 
transcends her. 

“Tf found at all,’ we said. But possibly the “ final good ” 
is simply not to be found. It may be an illusion, like the horizon 
which seems to be the end of the visible world, but recedes as we 
approach it. But at least the facts about human aspirations of 
which we have spoken are real facts, as the whole of the great 
literature of the world testifies. Any philosophy has to give some 
coherent and rational-seeming explanation of the fact that the 
“illusion” is there. We cannot say that it is an inevitable 
consequence of the fact that man is finite and perishable. We 
have all heard of 


‘‘ Infinite passion and the pain 
Of finite hearts that yearn.”’ 


But the finitude of the hearts does not explain the infinity of the 
passion ; it makes it a paradox. ‘The animals, too, are finite, 
yet their finitude causes them no unrest. But man is not only _ 
finite ; he Anows that he is finite! “There you come to the heart 
of the mystery. How isa creature who is merely finite to know 
that he is finite? Is this any more possible than it would be, for 
example, that a dog should know that he is “‘ only a dog” ? “This 
is the real crux which a simple “‘ this-world”’ philosophy persists in 
ignoring. Or how it comes that a race of beings shaped dy purely 


70 The Vindication of Religion 


temporal conditions to maintain their existence by adaptation fo 
temporal conditions so obstinately insists on demanding something 
more? How obstinate is the insistence is shown by the reluctance 
of the very thinkers who hold in theory that man is just one of the 
‘products of natural evolution” to advise him to behave himself 
accordingly. Of the many who repeat glibly enough that man is 
just an animal, who would say to a son setting out on life for 
himself, “‘ Be an animal”? Yet if any of us would count it 
wiser and better advice to his son to say “ Live like a creature 
destined for eternity,” is he not virtually confessing that the in- 
stinct, or whatever we may prefer to call it, for eternity, however 
questionable the forms in which it sometimes expresses itself, is at 
bottom a sound one ? 

We see that the general character of the argument from Nature 
and from our moral being to God is the same in both cases. In 
both we reason from the temporal to the eternal. But there ts 
this difference, that the elusive being to which we reason is, in the 
second case, something richer. Reflexion on what is below and 
around us suggested only an eternal intelligent designer and source 
of Nature. Reflexion on the moral nature of man suggests a 
being who is more, the eternal something before whom we must 
not only bow in amazement, like Job, but kneel in reverence as 
the source and support of all moral goodness, This is as it should 
be, since in the one case we are attempting to see the cause in the 
effect, in the other to see the features of the father in his child. 
If Nature shows us only the footsteps of God, in man as a moral 
being we see His image. 


III. From Gop to Gop 


‘The apparently paradoxical heading I have given to this 
section of my essay has been purposely chosen. We have con- 
sidered already the suggestiveness of what Bonaventura calls 
reflexion on what is beneath us and within us, and have now to 
take into account his “ reflexion on what is above us.” Here, if 
the phrase stands for anything real, we have clearly done with 
mere suggestions ; we are dealing with the interpretation of a 
direct manifestation of the divine and super-temporal, within 
the limits imposed by the finitude and temporality of the human 
recipient. ‘“I’o use phraseology which is more familiar to us of 


From God to God vA 


to-day, we have to consider the worth of the so-called “ religious 
experience” as testimony to the reality of its own object, and 
there is no line of argument which lends itself more readily to 
abuse. Every kind of faddist and fanatic will appeal as readily to 
“ experience ” for testimony to his own pet fancies as the credulous 
appeal to the “ evidence of their senses” for proof of the existence 
of ghosts or the reality of sorcery. We seriously need to remember, 
as the Bishop of Manchester has recently reminded us, that just 
as the “‘artist’s experience’ means the way in which the whole 
natural realm is experienced by the man who is an artist, so 
“ religious experience ” means not some isolated group of bizarre 
experiences but the special way in which the whole of life is 
experienced by the “religious”? man. And yet, true as this Is, 
the very statement implies that there are some experiences which 
stand out in the life of the religious man as characteristically 
predominant and determining the colouring of his whole experience 
of the world. ‘This is equally true of the artist. A man with 
the artist’s eye, we very rightly say, ‘sees beauty ’? everywhere, 
while a man without it goes through life not seeing beauty any- 
where, or at best seeing it only occasionally, where it is too 
prominent to be missed. Still no one doubts that even a man 
highly endowed with the gifts of the artist has to develop his sense 
for the beautiful. If he comes to find it present where the rest 
of us would never suspect it at all but for the teaching we may get 
from his work, this must be because he began by being specially 
alive to and interested in its presence where it is more visibly 
displayed. This again means that, however truly beauty may 
pervade the whole of things, there are special regions where its 
presence is most manifest and obvious. What is characteristic of 
the artist is that he makes just these elements of experience a key 
to unlock the meaning of the rest. So the religious man, no 
doubt, means the man who sees the whole of reality under the 
light of a specific illumination, but he has come to see all things 
in that light by taking certain arresting pieces or phases of his 
experience as the key to the meaning of the rest. In this sense 
we may properly speak of specifically religious experiences, as we 
may speak of a man’s experience in the presence of a wonderful 
picture or musical composition, or at a moment when a weighty 
decision which will colour the whole tenour of his future conduct 
has to be made, as specifically zsthetic or moral experiences. “The 


47) The Vindication of Religion 


question is whether there really are such specific experiences or 
whether what have been supposed to be so are only illusions, 
misinterpretations of experiences which contain nothing unique. 

‘This question is not settled by the admission that some experi- 
ences which have been reckoned by those who have had them as 
religious are illusory. All experience 1s liable to misinterpretation. 
We must not argue that sense-perception does not reveal a world 
of really existing bodies, which are no illusions of our imagination, 
on the ground that there are such things as dreams and hallucina- 
tions, any more than we may argue from the general reality of the 
things perceived by sense to the reality of dream-figures or ghosts. 
So again we may neither argue that there is no real beauty in the 
visible world because the best of us are capable of sometimes 
finding it where it is not, nor that because there is real beauty, 
every supposed beauty detected by any man must be real. Ina 
sense, “everything is given.” If there were no arresting per- 
ception of beauty in the region of colour or tone, we should never 
come to be on the look out for it where it is less manifest. /On 
the other hand, every man’s immediate verdict on beauty is not to 
be trusted. We have to learn how to interpret our experience 
in the light of the judgment of the artist who is specially endowed 
with a fine discrimination of beauty and has cultivated his eye or 
ear by long and careful attention to the zsthetic aspects of the 
sensible world before we can trust our own immediate “ taste ”’ 
for colour or line or tone. So, too, in matters or morality, if 
a man has no direct perception of what “ought ”’ means, it is 
impossible to convey that meaning to him ; but a man would be 
led sadly astray in his morality if he assumed that his own first 
judgments of right and wrong are infallible. He needs to learn 
“sound judgment in all things” by a training which puts him in 
possession of the moral tradition of a high-minded society, and by 
comparing his own judgment in cases of perplexity with that of 
men of high character, ripe reflexion, and rich knowledge of life. 
(This is why, though without conscientiousness there can be no 
true moral goodness, the faddist, who insists on treating his own 
‘* private ”’ conscience as infallible, is a mere moral nuisance.) 

We may readily admit, then, that much which the experiencer 
is inclined to take for “religious” experience is illusion. He 
may mistake the vague stirrings and impulses of sex, or zsthetic 
sensibility, or even pure illusions of sense or perception, for the self- 


From God to God 72 


revelation of the divine, just as any of us may, in favourable condi- 
tions, mistake what he has merely dreamed of for an event of 
waking life. And such confusions may very well lie at the bottom 
of widespread aberrations ; they may account very largely for the 
puerility of many of the “ religious” beliefs of mankind, and the 
lewd or bloody practices which defile so many of our ritual cults. 
And we must insist that if there are specific and unique religious 
experiences, they must not all be taken “at their face-value” ; 
like all other alleged experiences they stand in need of “ interpreta- 
tion” in the light of the judgment of the “ expert ” who Is at once 
keenly sensible of the actual ‘‘ experience,” and has brought a tried 
and sane judgment to bear upon it.1 We thus find ourselves face 
to face with a second question, and we have to ask (a) are there 
specific data which furnish the basis for a “* religious ” interpreta- 
tion of life, (4) and if there are, who are the “ experts” whose 
interpretation of the data should guide the interpretation ? 

(a) As to the first question. It has, as we all know, been 
denied that there are any specific data to furnish such an interpreta- 
tion with its starting-point. “The supposed data have been ex- 
plained away, now as ordinary physical facts misunderstood by the 
curious but ignorant savage, now as emotional reactions to dreams, 
fear of the dark or of lonely places, now as vague emotional 
reactions attendant on the different sexual modifications char- 
acteristic of adolescence, and in other ways. “The question 1s 
whether a// the known facts can be disposed of without remainder 
in this fashion. 4 priori we have no right to assume that this/can 
be done. It may be true, for example, that “ conversions ” 
are more common at or shortly after the reaching of puberty 
than at any other time of life. It is equally true that the same 
period is often marked by the sudden appearance of other new 
interests or the sudden intensification of old ones. “Thus a boy 
often suddenly developsa vivid interest in literature, ora new sensi- 
tiveness toart, in the years of dawning manhood. Clearly this does 


1 This sort of interpretation is needed even for sense-perception. Any one 
who has, e.g., ever used a microscope must remember how he had at first to 
learn to “‘see’’ with it. At first the beginner does not “‘ see’’ what his teacher 
says is there to be seen, or (experto crede) he ‘‘sees”’ a great deal that is not 
there. I can vividly recollect the trouble I had in this matter when first shown 
sections of the spinal medulla under the microscope. Cp. again the sharp 
disputes of astronomers about many of the markings which some of them claim 
to have “‘ seen ’’ on the disc of Mars. 


74. The Vindication of Religion 


not prove that the qualities we admire in literary style or in paint- 
ing or music are not really there, but only supposed to be there in 
virtue of an illusion of sexuality. 4 przorz it is just as likely that 
the effect of a crisis which affects our whole bodily and mental life 
should be to awaken a heightened perception of a reality previously 
veiled from our eyes, as to create the “illusion ” of a reality which 
is not there. ‘The experiences of adolescence may be, as a matter 
of my private history, the occasion of my first discovery of beauties 
in Keats or Chopin which I do not find in the ordinary rhymester 
or manufacturer of “music” for the piano. But how does this 
prove that in reality the poetry of Keats does not differ from that of 
writers for the provincial newspaper, or the music of Chopin from 
the average waltz or polka? ‘The problem is not how I came 
to make a certain “ find,’ but what the worth of the “ find ”’ 
may be. 
So with the part played by fear of the dark or of desert solitudes 
in creating beliefs in gods. “he real question is not whether 
emotions of this kind may not have influenced men’s religious 
emotions and beliefs, but whether the emotions and beliefs, how- 
ever they may have been developed, contain nothing more than 
such fears or contain something else which is quite specific, just as 
musical perception may be prompted or quickened by adolescence 
but certainly, when once it is there, contains a quite specific core 
or kernel of its own. However our sensibility to music began, 
elt is quite certain that what we perceive when we appreciate it is 
nothing sexual. ‘There are, I honestly believe, men who only 
respond to the appeal of musicso faras it, crudely or subtly, is made 
to sexual feeling, but such men are the typically “ unmusical.” 
What they value is not musical beauty itself, but a mass of sug- 
gestions which have to be got rid of before one can begin to 
appreciate “‘ pure”? music at all, exactly as one has to get rid of the 
tendency to demand that a picture shall “ tell a story ” before one 
can begin to understand the values of colour, line, disposal of 
light and shade. We have also to be on our guard against the 
standing “ psychologist’s fallacy’ which no one has done more to 
expose than Dr. Otto in the work to which reference has already 
been made. It is too often assumed that because there is an 
analogy between our mental attitude towards an object of our 
adoration and our attitude towards something we fear, or some- 
thing which attracts us sexually, the two attitudes must be the 


na &\7 


From God to God F455 


same. ‘I’hus our reverence for the God we worship is in some 
ways like our dread of a strange and powerful natural object ; 
our love for God is in some ways like the feelings of a devoted 
human lover, as the language of religious devotion is enough to 
prove. But it does not in the least follow that the likeness is 
more than a likeness ; it is still perfectly possible that even the 
rudest savage’s attitude in the presence of that which he “‘ worships ”’ 
has a character of its own quite distinct, e.g., from his mere fear 
of a formidable beast or of the dangers of the dark. Since language 
has been primarily adapted to express our attitude towards “‘ things 
of this world,” when we want to speak of our attitude in the 
presence of our zumina we have to make shift, as best we can, with 
words which properly designate an analogous but different atti- 
tude. “The psychologist and anthropologist are only too apt to 
take these makeshift expressions aw pied de la lettre ; because we 
have to say that we “ fear” or “ love” God, they assume that we 
mean no more than when we say that we are afraid of an angry 
bull or that we love a young lady. ‘Thus the specifically 
“religious ” character of certain experiences, if it is really there, 
eludes them because they have not taken Bacon’s warning against 
the zdola fort which arises from excessive belief in the adequacy 
of language. “They have not understood that the name of Gop 
is necessarily the “‘ ineffable ’’ name. 

That civilised men, in the presence of anything they take as 
divine, have this sense of being face to face with the “ ineffable ” 
is quite certain, and we can see by reading the cruder utterances of 
the uncivilised in the light of what has grown out of them that they 
too must have it. It is the great service of Dr. Otto to the philo- 
sophy of religion that he has worked out this line of thought in 
full detail in his careful analysis of the meanings of “ holy” and 
corresponding words, as revealed by the historical study of language 
and literature. “The main point to be made is that, as far back as 
we can trace the beginnings of religion, the “ holy,” even if it is 
no more than an oddly shaped stone, does not simply mean the 
strange or the formidable ; it means, at the lowest, the “ uncanny,” 
and the “ uncanny ” is precisely that which does not simply belong 
to “ this” everyday world, but directly impresses us as manifesting 
in some special way the presence of “‘ the other” world. As such, 
it repels and attracts at once, is at once the awful and the worship- 
ful, but above all in both aspects the absolutely transcendent and 


76 The Vindication of Religion 


“ other-worldly.” At different levels of spiritual development the 
object which awakens this special sense of being in the presence 
of the “‘ absolutely transcendent” may be very different. A low 
savage may feel it in the presence of what to us is simply a quaintly 
shaped stone or a queer-looking hill; the prophet feels it, and is 
crushed by the sense of its transcendent “ otherness,” in his vision 
of the Lord of hosts ; the disciples of Christ feel it in the presence 
ofa living man, who is also their friend and teacher, when we read 
of Him that “‘ he was going before them on the road and they were 
astounded (0apPobdvto), and as they followed they were terrified 
(epoBovvto)” (Mark x. 32). It is precisely the same feeling which 
has prompted, e.g., the utterance of the words of institution in 
the Eucharist sotto voce, and inspired the old Eucharistic hymn. 
GLYNoOKTH Toa oxEE Pooteta,! as well as the modern saying that if 
Shakespeare’came into the room we should all stand up, but if 
Jesus Christ came into the room we should all kneel down. It 
is equally the same sense of being in the presence of the wholly 
 other-worldly ” which finds expression in such an exclamation as 
the prophet’s “‘ Woe is me for I am unclean, for mine eyes have 
seen the Lord of hosts,” or St. Peter’s “‘ Depart from me, for 
1 am a sinful man.” We should quite misunderstand such lan- 
guage if we read it as a confession of any special wrongdoing on 
the part of prophet or apostle. It is the universal voice of the 
mutable and temporal brought face to face with the absolutely 
eternal ; hence in Scripture even the sinless seraphim are said to 
“veil their faces’ as they stand before their Lord. ‘This, again, 
is why it has been the belief of all peoples that he who sees 
a god dies. 

As nearly as we can express our attitude towards that which 
awakens this sense of being immediately in the presence of the 
 other-worldly” by any one word, we may say that it is the 
attitude of ‘“‘ worship.” But even here we need to remember 
the inadequacy of language. In our own Marriage Office the 
bridegroom speaks of ‘‘ worshipping” the bride ; a mayor or a 
police magistrate is to this day officially “‘ his worship.” “The word 
worship, like all other words, is really hopelessly inadequate to 
express the attitude a man experiences in the presence of what he 
feels to be the “absolutely other ’’ made directly manifest. (We 


1 See the working out of this thought in Otto, op. cit. (English tr.), chap. xiv. 
pp. 159 ff. 


From God to God mg 


do not say anything, we are simply silent when we kneel at the 
IncaRNATUs EST.) Yet it is hard to believe that the most sceptical 
among us does not know the experience. “There are those to 
whom it is present as a constant experience during their lives, and 
those to whom it comes but seldom ; there are those who bestow 
their “worship”? on inadequate objects, like the man who 
“worships”? his money or his mistress. But it is as doubtful 
whether there is really any man who has never worshipped any~- 
thing as it is doubtful whether there is any man who has never 
feared or never loved. ‘The experience moreover seems to be 
specially characteristic of man ; as the Greeks said, ‘* Man is the 
only animal who has gods.”” (Possibly indeed, the attitude of some 
dogs to their masters may offer a remote analogy, but we must 
remember that these are dogs who have been brought up by man 
and become at any rate distantly humanised by the process. “There 
is no reason to think that “‘ Yellow Dog Dingo” could ever have 
developed in this way.) 

And again, there can be little doubt that the men in whom the 
spirit of true worship has been most constantly present are they 
who show us human nature at its best. It is the “ brutalised ” 
man who is marked by the temper of habitual irreverence. Even 
if we judge of men solely by what they have effected in the way of 
‘social reform,” history seems to show that the men who have 
achieved most for the service of man in this world are men whose 
hearts have been set on something which 1s not of this world ; 
“the advance of civilisation is in truth a sort of by-product of 
Christianity, not its chief aim.”? 1) We may reasonably draw the 
conclusion that religion is just as much a unique characteristic 
and interest of humanity as love of truth, love of beauty, love of 
country, and that the saint’s “experience” is no more to be 
dismissed as an illusion than the thinker’s, the artist’s, or the 
patriot’s. 

(b) Of course, like all other immediate experiences, the 
peculiar experience of the immediate presence of the divine 
requires interpretation and criticism. A man may be moved to 
adoration by an unworthy and inadequate object, like the heathen 


1 W. R. Inge, Personal Religion and the Life of Devotion, p. 84 5 cf. ibid. 
pp- 59-60. A careful study of the debt of “ civilisation ” to St. Francis would 
afford an admirable illustration. No one in the course of many centuries has 
done more for “‘ civilisation’; no one, probably, ever thought less about it. 


> 


78 The Vindication of Religion 


who “ in his blindness, bows down to wood and stone,” or the lover 
who lavishes his spiritual treasure on a light woman. Religion 
is not proved to be an illusion by its aberrations, any more than 
science by the labour wasted on squaring the circle or seeking the 
elixir and the philosopher’s stone, or love by the havoc it makes of 
life when it is foolishly bestowed. “The sane judgment of reflexion 
is required to direct and correct all our human activities. We are 
neither to suppose that there is no way to God because some ways 
which have been found promising at first have led astray, nor yet 
that because there is a way, any way that mankind have tried must 
be as good a road to the goal as any other. We may freely assert 
that even the most puerile and odious “ religions” have had their 
value ; they have this much at least of worth about them that those 
who have practised them have been right in their conviction that 
the “other-world”’ is really there to be sought for. But to 
draw the conclusion that “all religions are equally good,” or even, 
like the ‘‘ Theosophists,” that at any rate every religion is the best 
for those who practise it, and that we are not to carry the Gospel 
to the heathen because they are not at a level to appreciate it, is 
like arguing that all supposed “ science” is equally good, or that 
we ought to abstain from teaching the elements of natural science 
toa Hindu because his own traditional notions about astronomy 
and geography are “the best he 1s capable of.” Views of this 
kind rest in the end on an absurd personal self-conceit, and 
a denial of our common humanity. A true religion, like’a true 
sclence, is not the monopoly of a little aristocracy of superior 
persons; itisfor everyone. We may not beable to teach the mass, 
even of our own fellow-countrymen, more than the first elements 
of any science, but we must see to it that what we do teach them 
is as true as we can make it. And so even more with religion, 
because of its direct relation with the whole conduct of life. A 
savage may be capable only of very elementary notions about God 
and the unseen world, but at least we can see to it that the ideas 
he has are not defiled by-cruelty or lewdness. Not to say that 
you never know how far the capacity of amy mind for receiving 
true ideas extends, until you have tried it. The “‘ Theosophist ”’ 
usually claims to show a broad-minded humanity, which he con- 
trasts complacently with the “‘ narrowness ”’ of the Christian who 
wishes all mankind to share his faith. But he belies his own pro- 
fession the moment he begins his habitual disparagement of the 


From God to God 79 


missionary. ‘To say that in religion, or in any other department 
of life, the vile or foolish is good enough for your neighbour is the 
arrogance of the half-educated. “The neighbour whom we are 
to love as ourselves deserves at our hands the best we can possibly 
bring him. 

The point I chiefly want to make, however, is that the specific 
experience of contact with the divine not only needs interpreta- 
tion, like all other direct experience, but that, though it is the 
directest way of access to the “ wholly other,” it is not the only 
way. If we are to reach God in this life, so far as it is permitted, 
we need to integrate the “religious experience” with the sug- 
gestions conveyed to us by the knowledge of Nature and of our 
own being. It seems clear that in its crudest manifestations the 
experience of this direct contact is not specifically connected with 
superiority in knowledge or in moral character. At a sufficiently 
low level of intelligence we find the idiot regarded as God- 
possessed in virtue of his very idiocy. (He is supposed to be in 
touch with the transcendent “ other” because he is so manifestly 
out of touch with our “this-world” daily life.)1 And the 
“holy men” of barbaric peoples are very seldom men who show 
anything we should call moral superiority over their neighbours. 
Even among ourselves it is often the simple and ignorant who 
make on us the impression of spending their lives most in the sense 
of God’s presence, and again the men who show themselves most 
keenly sensitive to “religious impressions” are by no means 
always among the most faultless. Indeed, ‘“‘ moral excellence ” 
itself, without humility, seems only too often to close the soul’s eye 
to the eternal. A self-absorbed prig is in deeper spiritual blindness 
than many an open sinner. But if we would look at the Lord 
“all at once,” we must of course integrate the glimpses we get in 
our moments of direct adoring contact with all that Nature and 
Morality suggest of the abiding source of them both. In par- 
ticular, we need to have the conception of the “ holy,” as the object 
of adoration, transformed in such a way that it is fragrant with moral 
import before “‘ Be ye holy because I am holy” can become the 
supreme directing note for the conduct of life. In principle this 
work of integrating our experience has been already accomplished 
for us by Christianity, with its double inheritance from the Jewish 


1 Cf. Wordsworth’s application to idiots of the words ‘‘ Their life is hid 
with Christ in God.” 


So The Vindication of Religion 


prophets and the Greek philosophers who freed their “ reasonable 
worship ” from entanglement in the follies and foulnesses of the 
old “ nature-religions.”” But the root of the old errors is in every 
one of us ; we cannot enter into the highest religious experience 
available to us except by a perpetual fresh interpretation of the 
given for ourselves. We may have Moses and the prophets and 
Paul and the evangelists, and yet, without personal watching unto 
prayer, all this will not avail to ensure that we shall think 
Christianly of the unseen, or that our sense of its reality will of 
itself lead us to a noble life rich in good works. And this answers 
for us the question “‘ Who are the experts?’ ‘The true “ expert 
critic” of the constructions and hypotheses of science is the man 
who has already learned what the men of science have to teach 
him. ‘The true expert critic of the painter or the musician must 
first have learned to see with the painter’s eye and hear with the 
musician’s ear. Without this qualification, mere acuteness and 
ingenuity are wasted. In the end, all effectual criticism must 
be of what a man has first seen and felt for himself. So the verdict 
on the religious life if it is to count must come from the men who 
have first made it their own by living it. Only they can tell 
‘how much there is in it.” 

I have urged that the suggestions of an eternal above and 
behind the temporal are derived from three independent sources, 
and that the agreement of the three in their common suggestion 
gives it a force which ought to be invincible. But I would end 
by a word of warning against a possible dangerous mistake. “The 
fullest recognition of the reality of the transcendental and eternal 
‘other’? world does not mean that eternity and time are simply 
disconnected or that a man is set the impossible task of living in 
two absolutely disparate environments at once. “Lhe two worlds 
are not in the end isolated from one another, since the one shines, 
here more, there less, transparently through the other. In man, 
in particular, they are everywhere interdependent, as Kant held 
that the real (or moral) and the apparent (or natural) realms are. 
We are not to spend half our time in the service of the eternal and 
the other half in the service of the secular. If we try to do this 
we shall merely incur the usual fate of the man with two masters. 
Weare not called to be pukka saints half the week and “ worldlings ” 
for the other half. Strictly speaking, we cannot divide a man’s 
occupations and duties into the “ religious”? and the “ secular.” 


From God to God Sr 


The true difference between the religious man and the worldly is 
that the religious man discharges the same duties as the other, but 
in a different spirit. He discharges them “ to the glory of God,” 
with God as his chief intention, that is, with his eye on an end the 
attainment of which lies beyond the bounds of the temporal and 
secular. ‘The truest detachment is not retreat to the desert, but a 
life lived in the world in this spirit. Thus, for example, a man dis- 
charges the duty of a husband and a parent in a secular spirit if he 
has no aim beyond giving his wife a “happy time of it”? and bring- 
ing up his children to enjoy a lucrative or honourable or comfort- 
able existence from youth to old age. Marriage and parenthood 
become charged with a sacramental spirit and the discharge of their 
obligations a Christian duty when the “ principal” intention of 
parents is to set forward a family in the way to know and love God 
and to be spiritual temples for His indwelling. It may be that 
the temporal will never cease to be part of our environment ; 
what is important is that it should become an increasingly sub- 
ordinate feature in the environment, that we should cease to be at 
its mercy, because our hearts are set elsewhere. Christianity has 
always set its face against the false treatment of the eternal and the 
temporal as though they were simply disconnected “ worlds.” In 
the beginning, it tells us, the same God created heaven and earth, 
and its vision of the end of history has always included the 
“ resurrection of the flesh ” to a glorified existence in which it will 
no longer thwart but answer wholly to the “ spirit.” If we are 
told on the one hand that a man who is in Christ is a “ new 
creation,” we are also told by the great Christian theologians that 
“ grace ” does not destroy “ nature ”’ but perfects and transfigures It. 


Bibliographical Note.—Besides the books referred to or quoted in the text 
I would specially recommend to the reader the following. Of course they are 
only a selection out of a much larger number. Perhaps I may also mention, 
as further illustrating some points touched on in the first part of this essay, an 
essay by myself in the volume on Evolution in the Light of Modern Science 
(Blackie, 1925). 


HUGEL, F. von. Eternal Life. T.& T. Clark. 1912. 
— Essays and Addresses on the Philosophy of Religion. Dent 
& Sons. rg21. 
SOLOVIEV, V. The Fustification of the Good. Eng. Tr. Constable. 1918, 
Ward, J. Naturalism and Agnosticism. A. & C. Black. First published 
1899. 
——-— The Realm of Ends. Cambridge University Press. 1911. 















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AUTHORITY 
BY ALFRED EDWARD JOHN RAWLINSON 


AND 


WILFRED L. KNOX 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


I. Autuority as A Grounp oF BELIEF . : 4 eee 
. The Authoritative Character of Chiteniy ; cee 
2. The Relation of the Gospel to the Church ., : a ear 
3. Authority as a Ground of Belief ; ; : Sars 
Il. THe Autuority oF THE CHURCH : : oes 
1. The Divine Commission of the Church ' ATPL S fs 
2. The" Infallibility” of Scripture. : . J\ineOe 
3. Nature of the Authority of Scripture : : wana es 
4. The Method of Christian Development : aie Re |) 
5. Lhe Meaning of Christian Experience : TO4 
6. Religious Experience and the Laie of Cpinile 
Doctrine : ‘ : 2h TOR 
7. The Formulation of Civitan Dea ; : Reais, 
8. The Claims of Catholic Authority . ; ! oi Le 
9. The Certainty of the Catholic Tradition  . Reo wc: 


AppitionaL Notes. : ( : P : UAT LG 


] 
AUTHORITY AS A GRouND oF BELIEF 


By A. E. J. Rawzinson 


1. The Authoritative Character of Christianity 


THE Christianity of history is a definite, historical, and positive 
religion. It is not (in the phrase of Harnack) “ Religion itself,” 
neither is it true to say that “the Gospel is in no wise a positive 
religion like the rest.””1_ On the contrary, the Gospel is in such 
wise “‘a positive religion,” that it came originally into the world 
in a particular context, and as the result of a particular historical 
process. It has ever claimed to be the divinely intended cul- 
mination and fulfilment of an even earlier historical and positive 
religion, that of the Jews. It has been characterised, in the course 
of its persistence through the centuries, by a specific and definite 
system of religious beliefs, as well as by what has been, in the main, 
a specific and definite tradition of spiritual discipline and cultus— 
a system of beliefs and a type of cu/tus and discipline, which have 
been discovered in experience to have the property of mediating 
(in proportion as they are taken seriously) a spiritual life of a highly 
characteristic and definite kind. From all of which it follows 
that Christianity is not anything which could be discovered or 
invented for himself by any person, however intellectually or 
spiritually gifted, in independence of historical tradition. "The 
term “Christian”? is not an epitheton ornans, applicable in the 
spheres of religion and ethics to whatever in the way of doctrine, 
ideal, or aspiration may happen to commend itself to the judgment 
of this or that individual who is vaguely familiar with the Christian 
tradition as the result of having been born and brought up in a 
country ostensibly Christian. It is a term which to the historian 
possesses a definite content, discoverable from history. And 
because Christianity is thus an historical and positive religion, it 
is impossible, in the first instance, for the individual to know any- 


1 The statements controverted are quoted from Harnack’s What is 
Christianity ? (E.T.), p. 63. 


86 Authority 


thing about it at first hand. He must be content to derive his 
knowledge of it from authority, whether the authority in question 
be primarily that of a living teacher, or of past tradition. 

It belongs, further, to the essential character of Christianity 
that (in common with all the great prophetic and historical 
religions) it claims to be a religion of revelation, and as such to 
proclaim to mankind an authoritative Gospel in the name of the 
living God. “The idea of authority,” writes Friedrich Heiler, 
“is rooted in the revelational character of the prophetic type of 
religion.” + “This certainly has been the characteristic of Chris- 
tianity from the beginning. It appears to have been character- 
istic of the historical attitude of Jesus Christ, as may be seen from 
the story of the scene in the synagogue at Capernaum in St. Mark 
(Mark 1.21 sqq.). It has been pointed out by the German scholar 
Reitzenstein that the Greek word @&%ovot«, which we render 
‘authority,’ was employed in Hellenistic Greek to denote, in a 
religious context, the idea of a combination of supernatural power 
with supernatural knowledge of divine things.2. So in St. Mark’s 
narrative the word is used to suggest the combination in Jesus of 
supernatural power with supernatural authority to teach. ‘‘ What 
is this? A new teaching! With authority, moreover, he com- 
mandeth the unclean spirits, and they obey him !” (Mark 1. 27). 
«« He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes ” 
(Mark 1. 22). “The Lord, as a matter of actual historical fact, 
astonished people by teaching independently of scribal tradition, 
with the unhesitating “authority ” of immediate inspiration. In 
this respect His manner and method of teaching resembled that 
of the great Old Testament prophets, but with the significant 
difference that whereas the Old ‘Testament claim to prophetic 
authority was expressed through the formula “Thus saith 
Jehovah,” our Lord said simply “I say unto you.” ‘The 
authority claimed by the Lord Jesus in matters of religion may 
thus be described as prophetic and super-prophetic : that is to 
say, He claims for Himself, without any hesitation, the plenitude 
of spiritual authority inherent in God’s Messiah, z.e. in the Person 
in whom God’s spiritual purpose of redemption, in every legiti- 
mate sense of the word, is summed up and destined to be realised, 


1 F, Heiler, Das Gebet, p. 266. 
2 R. Reitzenstein, Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen (2nd edn.), pp. 14, 
TOEMIO8. 


Authority as a Ground of Belief 87 


in the first instance for Israel, but ultimately also, through Israel, 
for mankind. 

And this attitude of spiritual authority, characteristic of Jesus, 
is characteristic also, according to the New Testament, of the 
Church. To the Church as the redeemed Israel of God is 
entrusted the word of the Christian salvation as an authoritative 
Gospel, a message of good news, to be proclaimed as the truth of 
God “in manifestation of the Spirit and of power.” “ He that 
heareth you heareth me: and he that rejecteth you rejecteth 
me: and he that rejecteth me rejecteth him that sent me” 
(Luke x. 16). “As the Father hath sent me, even so send I you” 
(John xx. 21). Fundamental in Christianity is this claim of the 
Church to have been divinely commissioned, divinely “ sent.” 
The Church is not primarily a society for spiritual or intellectual 
research, but a society of which it belongs to the very essence to 
put forward the emphatic claim to be the bearer of revelation, to 
have been put in trust with the Gospel as God’s revealed message 
to mankind, and to have been divinely commissioned with pro- 
phetic authority to proclaim it as God’s truth to all the world, 
irrespective of whether men prove willing to hear and give heed 
to the proclamation, or whether they forbear. In this respect the 
tone of the Church must always be “* Thus saith the Lord”: she 
must proclaim her message in such a fashion that men may 
receive it (like the Church of the Thessalonians in the New 
Testament) “ not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the 
word of God.” 

It is, moreover, in this sense—that is to say, as an authoritative 
Gospel—that the message of Christianity comes home, whenso- 
ever and wheresoever it does come home with effect, to the hearts 
and consciences of men. ‘“‘ Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing 
by the word of Christ” ; and the Gospel, thus authoritatively 
proclaimed, proves itself still to be “the power of God unto 
salvation unto every one that believeth.” The apologetic work 
of reasoned argument and philosophical discussion, the dissipation 
of prejudices, the antecedent clearing away of difficulties, the 
removal of intellectual barriers, may in particular cases be the 
necessary preliminaries to conversion. But conversion to Chris- 
tianity, in any sense that matters, is not primarily the result of an 
intellectual demonstration. Itisthe work of the Spirit. “ Noman 


can say ‘ Jesus is Lord,’ but by the Holy Ghost.’ Nevertheless, 


88 Authority 


when a man zs thus enabled by the power of the Spirit to say 
‘* Jesus is Lord,” he does so for the reason that he has been made 
aware, in the very depths of his soul, that he has been brought 
face to face with a truth which he did not discover, but which has 
been spiritually revealed to him, even the truth of God, “as truth 
is in Jesus”; and he knows henceforward that he is no longer 
his own master: he has given in his allegiance, in free and 
deliberate self-committal, to the supreme authority of Him who 
is the truth: he is from henceforth “a man under authority,” 
being “‘ under law to Christ.” 


2. The Relation of the Gospel to the Church 


With what has been thus far written, it is probable that the 
representatives of almost all types and schools of thought in Chris- 
tianity would find themselves to be, upon the whole, in substantial 
agreement. It is common ground that “‘ grace and truth came by 
Jesus Christ,” and that the Gospel is God’s authoritative message 
to mankind. ‘The main difference between the Catholic and the 
Protestant traditions in Christianity lies in the kind and degree of 
recognition which is given, side by side with the authority of the 
Gospel, to that of the Church. How is the relation of the Church 
to the Gospel properly to be conceived? Is the Church the 
creation of the Gospel? Or is the Church, in a more direct 
sense than such a view would suggest, the supernatural creation of 
God—a divine institution—the Spirit-filled Body of Christ ? 

Now, it can be recognised freely that the Spirit operates to-day, 
in varying measure, outside the borders of any institutional Church, 
that “the wind bloweth where it listeth,’ and that ‘“ Jordan 
overfloweth his banks all the time of harvest.” Nevertheless it 
must be afirmed that according to the New Testament the Church 
(the idea of which is rooted in that of Israel, the holy people of 
God) is the covenanted home of the Spirit, and the Church is 
historically the society which is put in trust with the Gospel for 
the benefit of the world. "The Gospel does not descend from 
heaven immediately, as by a special revelation. It reaches men 
through the instrumentality and mediation of the Church. This 
is true obviously in the case of all those who are born and brought 
up within the fold of the Church, and who acknowledge them- 
selves to be her spiritual children. It is true equally, though less 


Authority as a Ground of Belief 89 


obviously, in the case of those Christians who would be disposed to 
deny the idea of any ecclesiastical mediation, and who would 
conceive themselves to derive their faith directly from the New 
Testament ; since it is a plain fact of history that the very exist- 
ence of the New Testament presupposes the prior existence and 
activity of the Church, of whose authoritative tradition it forms 
a part. 

The Church, therefore, is not the creation of the Gospel. 
‘The Gospel is rather the divine message of redemption which 
is entrusted to the Church. ‘There is ideally no opposition or 
antithesis between “‘ Catholic” and “ Evangelical.” If Catholi- 
cism has ever in any degree failed to be Evangelical, it has to that 
extent and in that degree failed signally to be true to its vocation. 
Catholicism stands, according to its true idea, both for the 
presentation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in its fulness, and also 
for a certain wholeness, a certain completeness, in the development, 
maintenance and building up of Christianity as a system and 
spiritual “‘ way,” or manner of life. “The Catholic Church in 
idea is not simply the redeemed Israel of God: it is also the 
missionary of Christ to the world, the society which is put in 
trust with the Gospel. It is bound therefore of necessity to 
regard itself as an authoritative society, in so far as it is entrusted 
with an authoritative message, and empowered with divine 
authority to proclaim it. Beyond this, as the Beloved Community 
of the saints, the familiar home and sphere of the operations of 
divine grace, the ideal Fellowship of the Spirit, the Church 
possesses a legitimate claim upon the allegiance of its members, 
and exercises over them a teaching and pastoral authority, an 
authority not of constraint, but of love, in respect of which those 
who are called to the office of pastorate are enjoined in the New 
Testament so to fulfil their ministry as to seek to commend 
themselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. 

There are accordingly different types and kinds of authority 
in the Church, all of which are important and real, even though 
admittedly all (because of the frailty of men, and of the earthen 
vessels to which the divine treasure is committed) are liable to 
abuse. ‘There is the fundamental and primary authority of the 
Gospel, the divine message of revelation. There are the sub- 
ordinate and totally different questions of disciplinary authority in 
the Church, of the administrative authority of Church officers, 


go Authority 


of the prescriptive authority of custom, of the obligation or 
otherwise, in varying degree, of different types of Church 
ordinances and rules. “There is further the moral and religious 
authority of the saints, and of the devotional and ascetic tradition 
of Christendom, in relation to the proper development of the 
spiritual life in its most characteristically Christian forms. Any 
one who is wise will, if he desires to develop such spiritual 
life, go to school to the saints and pay heed to the devotional 
traditions of Christendom. ‘The sciences corresponding to this 
type of authority are those of moral, ascetic and mystical theology. 
They are essentially practical. “They presuppose the desire to 
make progress in the life of the spirit in its Christian form, and 
the readiness to learn from the experience of the saints and of 
former generations of Christians. But the proper concern of 
this essay is not with any of these forms of authority: it is with 
authority as a ground of belief—belief, not in the sense of what 
S. Paul means by fazth (z.e. the response of the “ heart,” or of the 
whole personality, to the primary appeal of the Gospel) but in 
the sense of the acceptance of beliefs, the acknowledgment of 
particular doctrines or historical assertions as true. 


3. Authority as a Ground of Belief 


For it is, in point of fact, obvious that the preaching of the 
Gospel, considered simply as the proclamation of a divine message 
which is primarily prophetic in type, presupposes as the intellectual 
ground of its validity a number of truths—philosophical, historical, 
and theological—which it is the business of Christian apologetics 
and theology to substantiate, to interpret, and to defend, It is 
possible to point, even in apostolic times, to the inevitable 
tendency to draw up short statements of Christian truth, dogmatic 
summaries of the intellectual content of the faith. “The work 
of the teacher in apostolic times went on side by side with that of 
the evangelist or preacher. The proclamation of the Gospel as a 
divine message of Good News presupposed, and required as its 
supplement, the teaching of doctrine. Unless certain dogmatic 
assertions are true, the whole Gospel of Christianity falls to the 
ground, ‘The truths, therefore, which to the Christian mind 
have appeared to be implicit in the truth of the Gospel, or to be 
presupposed by the assumption of the validity of Christian Church 


Authority as a Ground of Belief gI 


life and devotional practices, were eventually formulated, more 
and more explicitly, in the shape of dogmatic propositions 5 with 
the result that a body of credenda arose, which in the traditionally 
Catholic presentation of Christianity are proposed for the 
acceptance of the faithful on the ground of the teaching authority 
of the Church. 

From the point of view of the effectual handing on of the 
Christian tradition such a method of teaching was in practice 
inevitable, and has analogies in all branches of education. “The 
acceptance of alleged truths on the authority of a teacher who is 
trusted is commonly, in the initial stages of the study of any subject 
whatever, the dictate of wisdom. Authority, for those who are 
under instruction, is always, at least psychologically, a ground of 
belief ; nor is there anything irrational in the acceptance of beliefs 
on authority, provided always that there is reasonable ground 
for believing the authority on the strength of whose assurance the 
beliefs in question are accepted to be trustworthy, and that the 
degree of “interior assent” is proportioned to what is believed 
to be the trustworthiness of the particular authority concerned. 
There is nothing therefore prima facie irrational in the attitude 
of a man who in religious matters elects, even to the end, to sub- 
mit his judgment to authority, and to accept the guidance of the 
Church, since it may be argued that in respect of such matters it 
is a priori probable that the wisdom of the community will be 
superior to that of the individual, and the question may be asked : 
If the Christian Church does not understand the real meaning of 
Christianity, who does? “The Church in each successive genera- 
tion has always included within its membership a considerable 
proportion of such unspeculative souls, who have been content to 
accept such teaching as has been given to them “on authority,” 
and to live spiritually on the basis of a faith the intellectual content 
of which they have not personally thought out, and the purely 
rational grounds of which they have not personally attempted to 
verify. 

Even in the case, however, of those who could thus give no 
other intellectual account of their beliefs except to say simply that 
they had accepted them on authority, it is probable that the real 
grounds on which the beliefs in question are held are not exhausted 
by such a statement. A doctrine may have been accepted, in the 
first instance, on authority, but it remains inoperative (save as a 


92 Authority 


purely abstract and theoretical opinion) unless it is at least to some 
extent verified in the experience of life. It is doubtful whether 
those who have accepted their beliefs on authority could continue 
to hold them, if the experience of life appeared flatly to contradict 
them ; and conversely the extreme tenacity with which Christian 
beliefs (seriously challenged, very often, by contemporary critical 
thought) are not uncommonly maintained by those who in the 
first instance accepted them “ merely on authority,” is to be 
explained by the fact that the beliefs in question have mediated 
to those who entertain them a spiritual experience—valuable and 
precious beyond everything else which life affords—of the genuine- 
ness of which they are quite certain, and with the validity of which 
they believe the truth of the beliefs in question to be bound up. 

It was on an argument of this general kind, based on the 
pragmatic value of the “ faith of the millions ” (7.2. on the capacity 
of traditional Catholic doctrine and practice, as shown by experi- 
ence, to mediate spiritual life), that the late Father George Tyrrell 
was at one time disposed to attempt to build up a ‘“‘ modernist ” 
apologetic for Catholicism, And the argument is of value as far 
as it goes. It suggests that in such religious beliefs or religious 
practices as are discovered in experience both to exhibit “ survival 
value,’ and also to be manifestly fruitful in the mediation of 
spiritual life of an intrinsically valuable kind, there is enshrined, 
at the least, some element of truth or of spiritual reality, of which 
any adequate theology or philosophy of religion must take account. 
It is the function of theology in this sense to interpret religion, to 
explain it, without explaining it away. ‘Ihe argument of ‘Tyrrell 
at least constitutes a salutary warning against any such premature 
rationalism as, if accepted, would have the latter effect rather than 
the former. 

But the argument of Tyrrell, while suggesting that in every 
spiritually vital religious tradition there is some element of truth, 
of which account must be taken, does not obviously justify the 
intellectual acceptance at face value of the prima facie claims of 
any and every tradition, as such. The plain man may be pro- 
visionally justified in accepting religious beliefs and practices upon 
the authority of the Church—or more immediately, in actual 
practice, upon the authority of some particular religious teacher 
whom he trusts—and may discover in his own subsequent experi- 
ence of the life of the spirit, as lived upon the basis of such accept- 


Authority as a Ground of Belief 93 


ance, a rough working test of the substantial validity and truth of 
the doctrine in question. But what the plain man is thus enabled 
directly by experience to attest is rather the spiritual validity of 
Christianity as a way of life, and the fundamental truth of the 
spiritual reality behind it, than the strictly intellectual adequacy 
or truth of the intellectual forms under which he has received 
it as a dogmatic and institutional tradition. Meanwhile, in 
the world of our time, all Christian teaching whatever is very 
definitely under challenge, and the issues are further complicated 
by the existence of variant forms of the Christian tradition, and 
of a number of more or less conflicting religious authorities. “The 
plain man may indeed simply choose to abide by the tradition in 
which he has been personally brought up and which he has to a 
certain extent “‘ proved ” in experience, and to ignore the whole 
issue which the existence of current contradiction and conflict is 
otherwise calculated to raise. But a large number of plain men 
are not able to be thus permanently content with the practice of a 
religion which they have in no sense thought out, and with the 
acceptance of doctrines the properly intellectual basis of which 
they have never considered. “They ask for a reason of the hope and 
of the faith that isin them. In some cases they become conscious 
of a vocation to serve God with their minds. ‘The mere existence 
in the world of conflicting religious authorities raises problems 
enough. It is clear that religious authority has been claimed in 
different quarters for a large number of statements which, because 
of their manifest conflict, cannot all of them be equally true, and 
in some cases are definitely false. No claim has ever been made 
with more emphasis by religious authority than the modern 
Roman claim that the Bishop of Rome, under certain narrowly 
defined conditions, is possessed ex officio of a supernatural infalli- 
bility. ‘The writers of this volume are united in the conviction 
that the claims made in this respect for the Papacy are in point of 
fact untrue. “The question inevitably arises, What is the ulti- 
mate relation between authority and truth? What of the in- 
tellectually conflicting claims put forward by different self-styled 
authorities in the sphere of religion? Or again, What is the 
strictly rational authority of the main intellectual tradition of 
Christian theology ? 

It is obvious that these questions, when once they are raised, 
can only be solved, in the case of any given individual mind, on 


94 Authority 


the basis of an act, or a succession of acts, of private judgment. 
This is true even in the case of an individual whose solution of the 
problem assumes the form of submission to Rome. ‘There is a 
recurrent type of mind, fundamentally sceptical and distrustful of 
reason, and yet craving religious certitude and peace, which will 
gravitate always towards Rome ; and for minds of this type it 1s 
probable that only the Roman Communion is in the long run in 
a position to cater. “Che demand of such souls is not for any form 
of strictly rational or verifiable authority. It is for authority in 
the form of a purely external and oracular guarantee of intellectual 
truth, an authority of which the effect, when once its claims have 
by an initial act of private judgment been definitely acknowledged, 
shall be to exempt them from any further responsibility of a per- 
sonal kind for the intellectual truth of the religious beliefs which 
they entertain. “There are indeed good reasons for believing that 
such a solution is an illegitimate simplification of the intellectual 
problems involved in religious belief, but it is clearly a solution 
the attractiveness of which to some minds is exceedingly strong. 
In the earliest days of Christianity the Church does not appear 
to have made claims of a kind strictly analogous to those of the 
Papacy. “Ihe modern Roman conception of authority is the 
result of a development in the direction of rigidity and absolute- 
ness of claim, which appears to have been at least partly the result 
of reaction from, and opposition to, the religious confusions of 
Protestantism. 

Reaction and antithesis are not commonly the pathways to 
absolute truth. In any case it would appear to be clear that 
for the allegiance of those who, in despair of existing confusions, 
demand simply the kind of authority which, in virtue of the sheer 
absoluteness of its claim, shall appear to be its own guarantee, 
independently of any further appeal either to reason or to history, 
no other Christian communion will ever be in a position effec- 
tively to compete with the great and venerable communion of 
Rome. 

The rejection of the claim of the Roman Church to be possessed 
of authority in the form of what I have ventured to describe as 
an external and oracular guarantee of the intellectual truth of its 
doctrines carries with it, in the long run, the rejection of the 
purely oracular conception of religious authority altogether. 
Neither the oracular conception of the authority of the Bible, nor 


Authority as a Ground of Belief 95 


that of the authority of the ecumenical Councils and Creeds, is 
in a position to survive the rejection of the oracular conception of 
the authority of the Pope. ‘This does not of course mean that 
the authority either of the Bible, or of the Church, or of the 
ecumenical Documents and Councils, has ceased to be real. It 
means only that such authority is no longer to be taken in an 
oracular sense, and that the final authority is not anything which 
is either mechanical or merely external, but is rather the intrinsic 
and self-evidencing authority of truth. It means that authority 
as such can never be ultimately its own guarantee, that the claims 
of legitimate authority must always be in the last resort verifiable 
claims. ‘The final appeal is to the spiritual, intellectual and 
historical content of divine revelation, as verifiable at the three- 
fold bar of history, reason and spiritual expertence. 

This of course does not mean that the individual is capable 
in all cases, or in any complete degree, of effecting all these forms 
of verification for himself. It is the wisdom of the individual 
to pay reasonable deference to the wider wisdom of the community, 
and to regard as tentative the conclusions of his individual reason, 
save in so far as they are confirmed and supported by the corporate 
mind, as well as by the spiritual experience, not only of himself, 
but of his fellows. It does mean, however, that there exists a 
very real recognition and conception of religious authority which ts 
capable of Rene reconciled with inner freedom, a conception of 
authority which is capable of forming the basis of such an essentially 
liberal and evangelical version of Catholicism as that for which the 
Anglican Communion, at its best, appears ideally to stand. It is 
not at all true to say that the Church, on such a theory of authority, 
would be precluded from teaching clearly and dogmatically those 
foundation truths on which Christianity may be reasonably held 
to rest. On the contrary, the Church will be enabled to teach 
doctrine with all the greater confidence in so far as she is content 
to make an essentially rational appeal—in so far, that is, as her 
authority is conceived to rest, not simply upon unsupported 
assertions, but upon the broad basis of continuous verification in 
reason and experience. ‘The true authority is that which is able 
to flourish and to maintain itself, not simply under a régime of intel- 
lectual repression, but in an atmosphere of intellectual and religious 
freedom. I submit that it should be the aim of the Church so to 
teach her doctrines as by her very manner of teaching to bear 


96 Authority 


witness to her conviction that they are true, and that they will 
stand ultimately the test of free enquiry and discussion : to teach 
them, in other words, not simply as the bare assertions of an 
essentially unverifiable authority, but as the expression of truths 
which are capable of being verified—spiritually verified, in some 
sense, in the experience of all her members; verified intellec- 
tually, as well as spiritually, in the reason and experience of her 
theologians and thinkers and men of learning. 

It is involved in such a conception of Church authority that 
the tradition of Christian orthodoxy will not be in its essence a 
merely uncritical handing on of the beliefs and conclusions of the 
past: it will rather assume the form of the stubborn persistence 
of a continuously criticised, tested and verified tradition. I have 
argued elsewhere! that the amount of strictly intellectual and 
rational authority which attaches to the broad theological con- 
sensus of orthodox Christianity is in direct proportion to the 
extent to which it can be said to represent the conclusions of a 
genuinely free consensus of competent and adequately Christian 
minds, and in inverse proportion to the extent to which unanimity 
is secured only by methods of discipline. “There have been periods 
and countries in which the expression of unorthodox opinions has 
been attended by danger, not merely of ecclesiastical penalties, 
but of physical violence and suffering to those who professed them. 
To that extent what would otherwise be the overwhelming intel- 
' lectual and rational authority attaching to the virtually unanimous 
orthodoxy of such countries and periods requires to be discounted. 
Nevertheless, intellectual sincerity is a virtue which cannot be 
wholly eliminated by any system of discipline from the minds of 
Christian men. It may fairly be argued that the broad doctrinal 
tradition of orthodox Christianity has both maintained itself 
through long periods under considerable intellectual challenge, 
and has also exhibited very considerable powers of recovery after 
apparent defeat—a good example being the revival of Nicene and 
‘Trinitarian orthodoxy within the Church of England, after the 
widespread prevalence in intellectual circles, during the eighteenth 
century, of Deism. The weight of rational authority attaching 
to the proposition that ‘Trinitarian orthodoxy represents an intel- 
lectually true interpretation of the doctrinal implications of 


1 In the Bishop Paddock Lectures for 1923, published by Messrs. Longmans, 
Green & Co., under the title of Authority and Freedom, pp. 14 sqq. 


Authority as a Ground of Belief 97 


Christianity in respect of the being and nature of God is, on any 
view, very far from being negligible. 

‘To sum up the argument : The fundamental authority which 
lies behind the teaching of the Church is the authority of revela- 
tion, in the form of the (primarily prophetic) message of the Gospel, 
which the Church is divinely commissioned to proclaim. The 
purely dogmatic teaching of the Church represents the statement 
in intellectual terms of such truths as the Church holds to be either 
implicit in the truth of the Gospel, or else presupposed by the 
assumption of the validity of her spiritual life. The weight of 
intellectual authority which, in the purely rational sense, attaches 
to such statements is in proportion to the extent to which they 
represent a genuine consensus of competent and adequately 
Christian minds. 

It will be obvious that, from the point of view of an argument 
which thus regards rational authority as attaching to statements 
of doctrine in proportion to the extent of their real acceptance, 
and to the impressiveness of the consensus which they may be 
said to represent, the weight of actual authority attaching to 
particular statements of doctrine will be a matter of degree. The 
weight of rational authority will be at its maximum in the case 
of such statements of doctrine as are commonly ranked as “‘ ecume- 
nical,” and that on the ground both of the extremely wide con- 
sensus of genuinely Christian conviction which lies behind them, 
and also of the large number of Christian thinkers and theologians 
by whom they have been sincerely and freely endorsed. It will 
be at its minimum in the case of doctrines or practices which have 
either failed to gain wide-spread acceptance, or else are apparently 
only of temporary, local or insular provenance. Nevertheless, it 
needs to be recognised that some degree of rational authority 
attaches to every doctrine or practice which at any time or in any 
place has commanded the serious allegiance of Christians, and in 
the power of which men have been enabled to have life unto God, 
and to bring forth the fruits of the Spirit. What is merely 
sectarian or local need not necessarily be taken into account, 
indeed, at its own valuation. But it needs to be taken into account, 
and to have such truth and reality as it in fact represents fairly 
treated and adequately represented, in whatever may eventually 
prove to be the ultimate and finally satisfying statement of 


Christian theology. 


98 Authority 


II 
THe AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH 
By WitFrrep L. Knox 


1. The Divine Commission of the Church 


Aut Christians of whatever shade of belief would agree that the 
Church, in whatever sense the term is to be interpreted, is a body 
possessing a divine commission to preach the Gospel to the world. 
This claim proceeds inevitably from the belief that the one God, 
who revealed Himself partially to the prophets, law-givers and 
wise men of the old covenant, revealed Himself fully and finally 
in the person of Jesus, and continues to speak to mankind through 
the Holy Spirit, who dwells in the whole Church which is the 
Body of Christ. In this sense all Christians would agree that 
the Church has a divine authority, in virtue of which it can claim 
the absolute assent of the reason and conscience of all mankind. 
Unfortunately this agreement does not carry us very far towards 
solving the many controversies which have arisen with regard to 
the authority of the Church. ‘These controversies concern the 
interpretation of the divine revelation committed to the Church 
by our Lord, the nature of the body to which He committed that 
revelation, and the means by which that body ts able to formulate 
the true interpretation of His teaching. It is with these contro- 
versial matters that this essay is chiefly concerned. 


2. The “ Infallibihty” of Scripture 


It will be convenient if we begin by clearing up a controversy 
which time and the progress of knowledge have solved for all 
but the blindest partisans. “This is the old controversy as to the 
position of the Bible in Christian teaching. “The Church from the 
outset accepted the old Jewish Scriptures and regarded them, just 
as the Jewish Church had done, as the verbally inspired teaching 
of God. It avoided the obvious difficulties of harmonising the 
letter of the Old ‘Testament with the teaching of Jesus by the use 
of allegorical interpretations often of a rather desperate character ; 
in the conditions of human knowledge in the early Christian 
centuries it had no other means of solving the problem, unless it 
was prepared to abandon the whole claim that Christianity was 


The Authority of the Church 99 


the true development of the old Jewish faith. This the Gnostic 
heretics did ; but their attempt to reject the Old Testament, and 
where necessary parts of the New, was obviously fatal to the whole 
belief that Christianity is the one true revelation of God. 

‘To the Old Testament the Church added its own Scriptures, 
the New Testament. With the origin and formation of the 
New ‘Testament canon we are not here concerned ; it is sufficient 
to notice that for centuries before the Reformation the Church 
had possessed a body of sacred literature, which was universally 
accepted as divinely inspired and absolutely true, though the most 
important truth of certain portions might lie in an allegorical 
rather than in the literal meaning. In order to harmonise the 
Scriptures with the practice of the Church, as it had developed 
in the course of history, Catholics claimed that the Bible must be 
interpreted in the light of ecclesiastical tradition. Although the 
claim may often have been abused, and although the prevalent 
conception of the nature of ecclesiastical tradition may have been 
untenable (a point which will be considered later), there can be 
no doubt that the Catholic claim, that the Bible without some 
standard of interpretation cannot be applied to the daily life of the 
Christian individual or community, was in itself true. The 
Reformers claimed as against this that the Bible as it stands is 
the only source of authority for the teaching and practice of the 
Church. ‘The Reformers were in many cases justified in appealing 
to the New ‘Testament against the errors of much popular teaching 
and the abuses of their age ; but the claim that the Bible alone is 
the final and sufficient guide for Christian belief and morality was 
entirely untenable. In actual fact it involved not the appeal to 
the Bible, but the appeal to the Bible as interpreted by the system 
of some particular Reformer, who claimed that his particular 
system was the only true interpretation of the Scriptures ; the 
result was to produce a multitude of warring bodies, each holding 
to a different system of belief and anathematising all others ; the 
only ground of agreement being their denunciation of the errors 
of Rome. 

‘The scientific development of the last century has rendered 
untenable the whole conception of the Bible as a verbally inspired 
book, to which we can appeal with absolute certainty for infallible 
guidance in all matters of faith and conduct. On the one hand 
the exact meaning of its various parts and the authority which they 


100 Authority 


can claim are matters to be discussed by competent scholars ; it 
is hardly to be supposed that they will ever reach absolute unani- 
mity as to the various problems which the Scriptures present ; and 
even such unanimity could only be provisional, for it is essential 
to scientific thought that it should always contemplate the possi- 
bility of further progress. On the other hand the Christian body 
as a whole needs a standard of faith and life which it can accept 
as being, if not absolutely true in every sense, yet absolutely 
adequate as a means of salvation. Obviously this distinction is one 
which will need careful examination later ; for our present purpose 
it is sufficient to point out that the Church as a whole, and the 
individual—at least the individual who is not a highly trained 
theologian—need some means of deciding precisely what the 
Christian message is. If the Church is to bring men to God 
through the person of Jesus, or if the individual is to come to God 
through Jesus, there must be some means of ascertaining Who 
Jesus is, and how we are to find Him. It is perfectly possible 
that many people have found Him by merely reading the Bible ; 
but it is obvious that we cannot merely hand the Bible to the 
inquirer, with no further guidance, and be certain that he will 
find Jesus there aright. In practice the Reformed bodies have 
attempted to solve the difficulty by drawing up their own confes- 
sions of faith ; but the drawing up of such confessions was really 
an admission of the inadequacy of the Bible, since these confessions, 
while claiming to be the only true interpretation of Scripture, are 
found to differ widely in important matters of doctrine. Clearly 
the claim that the Scriptures alone are a sufficient guide in matters 
of faith could only be maintained if all impartial inquirers arrived 
at the same conclusions. It may be added that the measure of 
agreement to be found in these documents ts largely due to the 
fact that on many points of fundamental importance they adhered 
to the doctrines of the Catholic Church, which Catholics and 
Protestants alike believed to be clearly stated in the Scriptures ; 
in reality, however, these doctrines were only made clear by the 
earlier developments of Catholic theology. At the time they were 
not disputed by any party, and were therefore accepted by all as 
the clear teaching of the Scriptures ; it is now clear that they can 
only be regarded as the clear teaching of Scripture if it is admitted 
that the orthodox Catholic interpretation of the Scriptures on 
these matters in the first four centuries was in fact the correct one. 


The Authority of the Church IOI 


3. Nature of the Authority of Scripture 


At the same time all Christians would agree that in some 
sense the Bible possesses a paramount authority in matters of 
belief and conduct. Although it can no longer be regarded as 
a collection of infallible oracles from which it is possible at any 
moment to draw with certainty a complete answer to any question 
that may arise, it would be generally admitted that any development 
of Christian teaching must very largely be judged by its compati- 
bility with the teaching of the Scriptures as a whole. Opinions 
may differ as to what this teaching is, and how it is to be ascertained; 
in particular, Christian scholars and teachers, and organised 
Christian bodies may differ as to which elements both of the Old 
and New Testaments are to be regarded as of final and permanent 
importance, and which possess only a local and temporary value ; 
but it is universally recognised that the Scriptures contain a divine 
revelation, which in its essential elements lays down the lines 
which all subsequent developments of Christianity must follow. 
‘This authority proceeds from the nature of Scripture itself. The 
Old ‘Testament shows us the process by which the religion of the 
Jewish nation was developed from a system of mythology and 
folk-lore similar to that of the other Semitic nations into a severe 
monotheism, based on the identification of the nature of God with 
ethical perfection, and safeguarded by an elaborate religious code 
from contamination with the lower religious systems of the ancient 
world. “The New Testament contains the history of the full and 
final revelation of God to man in the person of Jesus, as recorded by 
the men who had lived under the influence of His earthly life, 
together with their interpretations of His life and teaching in its 
bearing on the relations of God to man. 

It is impossible to believe that the literature which records 
and interprets this historical process was compiled by the human 
authors without a special measure of divine assistance. It is of 
course possible to deny the account of the origin of the Scriptures 
given above : but obviously to do so is to reject Christianity as in 
any sense a divine revelation. If it be accepted, it follows for the 
Christian that God must have chosen the men who were to carry 
out the task, and given them special gifts of the Holy Spirit for 
doing so. “This need not imply in any way that they wrote with 
explicit consciousness of anything but ordinary human motives, 


102 Authority 


or that they were divinely delivered from the possibility of human 
error. It does imply that these writings possess an inspiration 
different from that which is to be found in the greatest monuments 
of human literature and that they contain in substance the record 
of a divine dispensation to which all subsequent developments of 
Christianity must conform. 


4. The Method of Christian Development 


Anyone who is acquainted with the methods of modern in- 
vestigation of the Old “Testament recognises that the historical 
development of Israel was very different from that which the 
narrative describes. Instead of a series of catastrophic divine 
revelations to the patriarchs and Moses resulting in the permanent 
codification of the Jewish system of law and worship, we find a 
very slow evolution which only reached its final form some three 
centuries before the Incarnation. Although this evolution was 
largely due to the work of individuals whose writings we possess, 
it is obvious that their labours would never have led to any result, 
if they had not been able to appeal with success to the religious 
and moral ideas of their contemporaries. Any prophet or re- 
former in any branch of life depends for his success on his power 
to commend his message to his hearers. “Their response may not 
be immediate ; but he must in some way gain the assent of those 
whom he addresses, if his work is not to be an absolute failure. 
‘Thus although we may truly say that the development of the 
Jewish religion was the work of the prophets and law-givers of 
the nation, yet it is equally true to say that it was the work of the 
hearers, who accepted the progressive stages of that process of 
modification which transformed the national faith from the 
worship of the original tribal deity and such other local deities as 
attached themselves to the nation in the course of its history into 
the worship of the one God, who is the Creator and Ruler of the 
universe. 

We see the same process in the history of the earthly teaching 
of Jesus. Although He taught as one having authority, yet He 
does not appear as a teacher of a dogmatic system. Even in His 
ethical teaching He continually appeals to the conscience of His 
hearers to make it clear that the teaching He gives is the logical 
conclusion to be drawn from the Mosaic Law as accepted by them. 


The Authority of the Church 103 


The first incident in His public ministry which has a really dog- 
matic importance is the question put to the disciples at Caesarea 
Philippi. ‘‘ Who do men say that I am?” and the subsequent 
question, “But who say ye that I am?” ‘The disciples 
are challenged to say whether in the light of their more intimate 
experience of His work and teaching they can regard the views 
of the general public as being in any way adequate ; St. Peter’s 
answer is an admission of their inadequacy, and a confession 
of the supernatural character of the origin and mission of Jesus, 
which is the germ of Catholic Christology. Its importance 
for our present purpose lies in the fact that it is only elicited by 
our Lord in reply to a question which presupposes some months 
of experience of His life and teaching; incidentally it may be 
noticed that it comes from one of the three disciples who had a 
more intimate experience of that life and ministry than the rest. 
A similar phenomenon may be observed with regard to the death 
of our Lord. It is only after the incident at Caesarea that He 
prepares His disciples for the shock of His crucifixion; and 
although at the moment the blow was too much for their faith, 
yet it did not completely destroy it. For the disciples were still 
an united body, apparently looking for some further development 
when our Lord appeared to them after His resurrection. In 
other words their experience of Him made it impossible for them 
to suppose that His death was really, as it seemed, a complete and 
final catastrophe. 

If we examine the later history of the apostolic period we find 
a similar process of development. ‘The first serious issue of 
controversy which the Church had to face was that which arose 
over the admission of uncircumcised Gentiles. Even the auto- 
cratic personality of St. Paul could only solve the question when the 
natural leaders of the Jewish party, St. Peter and St. James, had 
come to realise that the essential elements of Christianity lay in 
the new powers bestowed by Jesus on His followers, which rendered 
it unnecessary to insist on the old methods by which Judaism had 
preserved itself from heathen contamination. In the later books 
of the New Testament we see a steady process of development. 
The Fourth Gospel and the later Pauline Epistles show a marked 
tendency to appreciate more fully the implications of the belief 
in the supernatural character of the person of Jesus, and to con- 
centrate the attention of the Church on this aspect of Christianity 


104. Authority 


rather than on the supposed imminence of His return. In other 
words we see the mind of the Church, as reflected by the writers 
of these works, developing under the influence of Christian 
experience. 


5. The Meaning of Christian Experience 


Since the terms “religious experience” or ‘ Christian 
experience ”’ will play a considerable part in the remainder of this 
essay, it will perhaps be well to explain at this point the exact 
sense in which they will be used. By Christian experience 
is meant that apprehension of God through the person of Christ 
which is vouchsafed to all Christians who in any way attempt 
to live up to the standard of their profession. It may be no 
more than an experience of power to overcome temptation and 
to advance in the direction of Christian holiness in however 
rudimentary a degree. It includes any sense of communion with 
God in prayer and worship, whether that sense of union is of the 
elementary type described by theologians as “sensible devotion ” 
or rises to the higher forms of prayer to which the great mystics 
have attained. It covers also such indirect forms of communion 
with God as the sense of deliverance from the burden of sin. To 
a greater or less extent, according to the religious development of 
the believer and his power to adjust his religious beliefs to his daily 
life, it covers the whole of his outlook upon the world in general. 
It is not in any way confined to any kind of mystical experience of 
God, nor yet to that “ sensible devotion ’”’ which a certain type of 
modern theology seems to regard as the main element of religion. 
‘The person who finds no particular consolation in his prayers, 
but only knows that by using the means of grace he is able to 
attain to a higher standard of life than he would otherwise achieve, 
has a Christian experience as genuine as the greatest mystic, 
though of a much lower degree of intensity. On the other hand 
the higher forms of experience of God through our Lord are an 
important part of the whole sum of Christian experience, though 
not the whole of it. 

Clearly from the Christian point of view religious experience 
cannot be treatedasa purely natural phenomenon. It isthe know- 
ledge of God vouchsafed to man by the power of divine grace and 
the illumination of the Holy Spirit. Its method of operation has 
already been indicated in the foregoing section. “The reforms 


The Authority of the Church 105 


of the religion of Israel by prophets and lawgivers were the result 
of their own personal experience of God, achieved by prayer and 
reflection on the nature of the divine Being. In the case of many 
of them it is obvious that the experience of God was of a peculiarly 
intense character. In the same way their ability to commend their 
message to their hearers depended on the fact that the latter had, 
in however elementary a form, some sort of consciousness of the 
nature of God, in virtue of which they were able to recognise the 
truth of the prophetic message. Naturally this recognition was 
only slowly effected, since the hearers as a rule possessed a far more 
limited consciousness of God than the prophet ; often no doubt 
it took several generations to enable the mass of the nation to 
assimilate even the general outlines of his teaching. But without 
some religious experience of however elementary a kind in their 
hearers the prophets would have had nothing to appeal to. 

The same phenomenon appears in the New Testament. Our 
Lord appeals, as has been noticed above, to the religious conscious- 
ness of those brought up in the atmosphere of prophetic teaching 
and ardent Messianic expectation which prevailed in Galilee in 
His days. On the basis of this religious experience He builds up 
His own exposition of the true nature of the Kingdom of God, 
primarily in His disciples, but to a lesser extent in the general 
body of His hearers. In appealing to the Gentiles, St. Paul 
appeals to a religious experience already moulded either by famili- 
arity with the Judaism of the synagogues of the Dispersion, or in 
a few cases by the highest religious teachings of Gentile philo- 
sophy. In both cases his main appeal is to a sense of sin as a barrier 
between man and God, and the impotence of Judaism or of human 
wisdom to provide a means of escape from it. His teaching is to 
a peculiar degree modelled on his own religious experience, especi- 
ally on his conversion ; but it necessarily appeals to the religious 
experience of his hearers, however slight that experience may have 
been at the moment when he first addressed them. 


6. Religious Experience and the Development of Christian 


Doctrine 


In modern controversies on the subject of the nature of 
Christian authority and the proper organisation for its exercise, 
the part played by Christian experience has often been overlooked. 


106 Authority 


It may be doubted whether the sterility of these controversies has 
not in part at least been due to the omission. In the actual 
history of the process by which the historical system of Catholic 
Christianity has been built up the part of the general religious 
experience of the whole body of Christians has necessarily been 
of primary importance. ‘The actual formation of the canon of 
the New Testament was almost entirely due to the general sense 
of the Christian communities of the first two centuries. Books 
were indeed often admitted because they were believed to be the 
work of Apostles, but others were rejected although they bore no 
less venerable names. But although the reason for their rejection 
was the belief that they were spurious, yet in an age which had 
little knowledge of critical methods the main test of authenticity 
was whether the doctrines laid down in such books were a correct 
interpretation of the implications of the religious experience of the 
Christian body as a whole. In certain cases, indeed, we find 
appeals to a supposed body of unwritten teaching left by the 
Apostles ; but although much teaching given by the Apostles 
must have been left unrecorded, there is no evidence whatsoever 
that there was any coherent body of traditional teaching which 
has not survived. ‘The appeal is fairly frequently met with in the 
first three Christian centuries, especially in the controversies of 
the Church with Docetism and Gnosticism. But while it can- 
not be justified in this form, yet it represents a quite legitimate 
appeal to that interpretation of the original deposit of Christian 
doctrine to be found in the canonical books of the New ‘Testa- 
ment, as interpreted by the Christian experience of the Church in 
all places and in all generations since the Incarnation. “The im- 
portance attached in these centuries to certain sees which claimed 
apostolic founders was not justified, in so far as it was claimed 
that they possessed over and above the written records of the New 
‘Testament a further body of apostolic doctrine ; it was justified 
in so far as the circumstances of their foundation and early history 
guaranteed that the Christian consciousness of those Churches had 
from the first rested on a basis of orthodox Christian teaching. 

It may indeed be said that in these centuries it was mainly 
due to the general religious sense of the Christian community 
that these entirely destructive heresies were eliminated from the 
Church. Although we possess the names and writings of some 
of the orthodox theologians of the time, it may well be doubted 


The Authority of the Church 107 


whether their labours would, from a purely intellectual point of 
view, have won the victory. On the other hand, their attitude 
was felt to represent the true development of the original deposit 
of the Christian faith, while the doctrines of the various heresi- 
archs were rightly rejected as alien additions or false interpreta- 
tions which were fatal to that religious experience which the 
faithful felt themselves to have enjoyed in the Church. This 
reason for the rejection of these doctrines was perfectly legitimate. 
The claim of a religion to acceptance lies in its power to awaken 
religious experience in the believer — naturally the Christian 
claims that Christianity is unique in respect both of the nature of 


the experience it conveys and of the manner in which it conveys it. | 


A doctrine which is fatal to the enjoyment of that experience 
must be rejected, unless we are to admit that the experience was 
an illusion, and to abandon the religion which appeared to convey 
it. “This, of course, does not mean that the individual’s judgment 
as to a particular doctrine is necessarily correct. On the other 
hand, the rejection of a false doctrine or the establishment of a 
true one can never be the work of an individual. Even when it 
is largely due to the labours of an individual theologian the reason 
for the success of his labours must in all cases be the fact that he 
has succeeded in commending his teaching to the general Christian 
consciousness. Just as the success of the Jewish prophet depended 
on his ability to commend his view of God to the nation, so the 
Christian teacher must commend his doctrine to the Christian 


consciousness as a whole, if his labours are not to perish. For our ; 
present purpose the point of primary interest is that in the first / 


three centuries the Church overcame the gravest perils that ever | 
faced her without any organised method of formulating the true 


developments of doctrine or rejecting the false ones by the instinc- | 


tive action of the corporate consciousness of the Christian body as 
a whole. ‘The orthodox Church proved the truth of its teaching 


by its survival: the falsehood of rival forms of teaching was | 


proved by their disappearance. 


7. The Formulation of Christian Doctrine 


It is clear, however, that the general Christian consciousness 
is by itself a vague and fluctuating mass of individual opinions, 
approximating in each case to the truth, yet perhaps in no case 


— 


108 Authority 


fully grasping the whole truth with no admixture of error. 
Even in the most rigidly orthodox body of Christians different 
individuals will base their religious life more definitely on some 
elements of the whole Christian system than on others. A 
Christian who could grasp not only in theory but in the practice 
of his life the whole system of Christian teaching in all its fulness 
and with no admixture of error would obviously be a perfect 
saint and a perfect theologian ; he would indeed see the truth 
as it is present to the mind of God and correspond with it perfectly: 
for moral failure inevitably carries with it failure to apprehend 
the truth. “The whole sum of the Christian experience of the 
Church at any given moment must be an inarticulate mass of 
opinion comprehending in general the whole body of divine truth 
as revealed in Jesus ; its only way of articulating itself will be its 
power to express approval of some particular statement of the 
faith as put forward by an individual theologian, unless the Church 
is to have some means for expressing its corporate voice. Hence 
it was natural that with the ending of the ages of persecution the 
Church should find some means of articulating her teaching and 
putting into a coherent form the sense in which she interpreted in 
the light of Christian experience the original deposit of faith which 
she had received from her Lord. 

We are not here concerned with the history of the Councils 
which decided the great Christological controversies, nor yet with 
the process by which the decisive influence in all matters of 
doctrine passed, at the cost of the Great Schism between the East 
and West, into the hands of the Papacy. “The important matter 
for our present purpose Is to consider the claims which are made on 
behalf of the various definitions of Christian doctrine by bodies 
claiming to voice the authority of the Holy Ghost speaking 
through the Church, and the sense in which those claims can be 


_regarded as justified. 


It has in many if not in all cases been claimed that the various 
doctrinal pronouncements of Councils and Popes are simply the 
affirmation of what the Church has always believed. In the strict 
sense the claim cannot be maintained ; for it is easy to find cases 
in which theologians of the most unquestioned orthodoxy put 
forward doctrines which were subsequently condemned, or re- 
jected doctrines which were subsequently affirmed as parts of the 
Catholic faith. Hence it is now generally admitted that such 


The Authority of the Church 109 


pronouncements are to be regarded as affirmations in an explicit 
form of some truth which was from the outset implied in the 
original deposit of the Christian revelation, though hitherto not 
explicitly realised. This claim is in itself a perfectly reasonable 
one. For the Christian revelation begins with the life of Jesus, 
presenting itself as a challenge first to the Jewish nation and then 
through His Apostles to the whole world, not with the formula- 
tion of a dogmatic system. It was only when Christian thought 
began to speculate on the whole subject of the relations of God to 
man and man to God implied in that revelation that the need was 
felt for some body of authoritative teaching which would serve 
both to delimit the Christian faith from other religions and to rule 
out lines of speculation which were seen, or instinctively felt, to 
be fatal to the presuppositions on which the religious experience 
of the Christian body rested. It should be borne in mind that 
the great majority of authoritative statements of doctrine have 
been of the latter kind, and that they usually aimed rather at 
excluding some particular doctrinal tendency, which was seen to 
be fatal to the Christian life, than at promulgating a truth not 
hitherto generally held. aot 

In this sense it seems impossible to deny that the Church ought 
to possess some means for formulating her teaching, which will 
enable her to adjust that teaching to the developments of human 
thought, while eliminating doctrines which would, if generally 
accepted, prove fatal to the preservation and propagation of the 
life of union with God through the person of our Lord, 
which it is her duty to convey to mankind. It might indeed 
be argued that even without such means for formulating her 
teaching the Church did in the first three centuries eliminate 
several strains of false teaching, which would appear on the 
surface to be more fatal to the specifically Christian religious 
experience than any which have threatened her in later ages. It 
must however be remembered that unless the Church has some 
means of defining her teaching in the face of error there is always 
a grave danger that the simple may make shipwreck concerning 
the faith. “This might not be a very serious matter, if we were 
merely concerned with intellectual error as to some abstruse point 
of theology ; the danger is that large numbers of the faithful may 
fall into conceptions of the nature of God which are fatal to the 
attainment by them of the specifically Christian character and the 


IIO Authority 


specifically Christian religious experience. Even though in the 
long run the truth should, by the action of the Holy Ghost on the 
whole Christian body, succeed in overcoming error, the Church 
is bound to exercise the authority given to her by our Lord in 
order to preserve her children from this danger. If this account 
of the reasons which underlie the formulation of the teaching of 
the Church be accepted, certain conclusions will follow. “The 
organ through which the Church pronounces must be in a position 
to judge correctly what the Christian religious experience really 
is. “This involves not merely intellectual capacity to understand 
the meaning of any doctrine and its relation to the rest of the 
Christian system, but also that insight into the Christian character 
which is only derived from a genuine attempt to live the Christian 
life. [he same applies to all theological thought: G@ristian 
theology no less than other sciences has suffered profoundly from 
the disputes of theologians and authorities who, often uncon- 
sciously, confused the attainment of truth with the gratification 
of the natural human desire to achieve victory in controversy 
or the natural human reluctance to admit an error. 

It is however more important for our present purpose to 
observe that if the authority of the Church is to decide whether 
a particular doctrine is compatible with the religious experience 
of the whole Christian body, it must be able to ascertain what the 
religious experience of the whole body really is. In other words 
it must be able to appeal not merely to the religious consciousness 
of a few individuals, however eminent they may be in respect of 
sanctity or learning. So far as is possible, it must be able to appeal 
to the whole body of the faithful in all places and in all generations. 
It must inquire whether any particular form of teaching is com- 
patible with that experience of union with God through our 
Lord which all generations and nations of Christians believe 
themselves to have enjoyed ; whether it is implied in it or whether 
it definitely destroys it. “The extent to which any pronounce- 
ment can claim to be authoritative will depend on the extent to 
which it can really appeal to a wide consensus of Christian experi- 
ence representing the infinite variety of the types of man who have 
found salvation in Christ. Naturally it will not be content 
merely with counting numbers ; it is also necessary to consider 
how far the consensus of the faithful on any given matter represents 
the free assent of men who were able to judge, or on the other hand 


The Authority of the Church III 


merely represents the enforced consent of those who either 
through ignorance or even through political pressure were more 
or less compelled to accept the faith as it was given to them. 


8. The Claims of Catholic Authority 


It is from this point of view that the claims of the Catholic 
tradition are most impressive. For it cannot be denied that the 
Catholic tradition of faith and devotion manifests continuous 
development reaching back to the origins of Christianity. In 
spite of wide divergences in its external presentation of religion, it 
can show a fundamental unity of religious experience throughout 
all ages and all nations of the world, reaching back to the times when 
the Church had to propagate her teaching in the face of the bitter 
persecution of the State. Although in later times the Catholic 
Church has lost her visible unity, yet the general system of Catholic 
life and worship has shown its power to survive and even to revive 
from apparent death. ‘The exercise of the authority of the Church 
has indeed been impaired by the divisions of the Church 3 but the 
general unity of the trend of Catholic development in spite of these 
divisions is an impressive testimony to the foundations laid in the 
period of her unity. 

None the less it is necessary to inquire exactly what measure 
of assent may be claimed for those definitions of doctrine which 
have the authority of the undivided Church, and how we may 
recognise those pronouncements which really have the highest 
kind of authority. It is usually held that any definition of doctrine 
promulgated by a Council which can really claim to speak in the 
name of the whole Church, as a doctrine to be accepted by all 
Christians, is to be regarded as the voice of the Holy Ghost 
speaking through the Church, and is therefore infallible. “Uhe 
same claim is made by those who accept the modern Roman 
position for pronouncements made by the Pope, in his character of 
supreme Pastor of the whole Church, on matters of faith and morals. 
The exact extent to which any pronouncement, whatever the 
weight of authority behind it, can be regarded as infallible 
will be considered in the following section. It is however con- 
venient to consider first the whole conception of authority as 
residing in the nature of the organ which claims to speak with 
final authority. From this point of view it is in the first instance 


112 Authority 


only possible to defend the claim that any organ can claim in- 
fallibility by means of the distinction generally drawn between 
doctrinal definitions which all Christians are bound to believe 
and disciplinary regulations intended to govern the details of 
ecclesiastical procedure and the popular exposition of the Christian 
faith. In itself the distinction is a sound one ; for it is reasonable 
that the Church should have the right to exercise some control 
over such matters as the conduct of Christian worship and also the 
teaching of the Christian faith. For instance, it may be desirable 
to control the extent to which new teaching, which at first sight 
seems difficult to reconcile with existing beliefs, should be ex- 
pounded to entirely ignorant audiences. A further complication 
arises from the fact that~it is by no means always clear whether 
a particular organ has the right to speak, or is at any given moment 
speaking in the name of the whole Church. For instance, there 
are numerous cases in which bodies professing themselves to be 
general Councils have promulgated decisions which have since 
been seen to be untenable. It is usually said that these bodies 
were not in fact general Councils at all. “The same difficulty 
applies under modern Roman theories to papal pronouncements, 
for it is dificult to say with precision which pronouncements on 
the part of the Papacy are promulgated with the supreme authority 
of the Holy See and which are only uttered with the lesser authority 
of disciplinary pronouncements. Hence it has happened in the 
past that the decisions of Councils which claimed to be general 
Councils have been reversed by Popes or later Councils, and that 
papal decisions have been tacitly abandoned. ‘Thus in fact the 
mere nature of the authority which utters a decision, whether 
Pope or Council, is by itself of no value as a test of infallibility. 

If in fact we inquire what decisions made by authorities 
claiming to speak for the whole Church are generally regarded. 
as infallible, we shall find that they are those which have won the 
general assent of the whole Christian body, or, as in the case of 
more modern Roman pronouncements, of a part of that body 
which claims to be the whole. It has been urged above that the 
function of authority in the Church is to formulate and render 
explicit, where need arises, truths implied in the spiritual 
experience of the Christian consciousness, and it is therefore not 
unnatural to suspect that the measure of truth, which any such 
pronouncement can claim, Is to be tested by the extent to which 


The Authority of the Church 113 


after its promulgation it commends itself to the authority which it 
claims to represent. In point of fact it is manifest that this is what 
has actually taken place. Pronouncements which have in fact 
commended themselves to the general Christian consciousness 
have gained universal acceptance and have come to be regarded as 
expressing the voice of the whole Church. ‘Those which have 
been found in practice to be inadequate, or have been shown to be 
untenable by the advance of human knowledge, have been relegated 
to the rank of temporary and disciplinary pronouncements, or else 
the body which promulgated them has been held not to have spoken 
in the name of the whole Church, sometimes at the cost of a 
considerable straining of the facts of history. 

It seems however more reasonable to recognise the facts rather 
than to strain them in order to suit a preconceived idea of what the 
authority of the Church should be. From this point of view it 
would appear that just as the inherent authority of a particular 
pronouncement depends on the extent to which it really represents 
a wide consensus of Christian experience, so the proof of that 
authority will lie in the extent to which it commends itself by its 
power to survive as a living element in the consciousness of the 
whole Christian body. Its claim to validity will depend very 
largely on the extent to which that body is free to accept it or not, 
and also on the extent to which it is competent to judge of the 
matter. It will be observed that this does not imply that the truth 
of a pronouncement is derived from its subsequent acceptance by 
the faithful. Obviously truth is an inherent quality, due to the 
fact that the Holy Ghost has enabled the authority which speaks 
in the name of the Church to interpret aright the truth revealed by 
our Lord and realised in the devotional experience of the Church, 
and to formulate that truth correctly. But the test of any in- 
dividual pronouncement, by which it can be judged whether it 
possesses the inherent quality of truth or not, will be its power 
to survive and exercise a living influence on the general con- 
sciousness of Christendom over a wide area of space and time. 


9. The Certainty of the Catholic Tradition 


At this point the obvious objection will be raised that on the 
theory outlined above the Christian will at any given moment be 
unable to know precisely what he is bound to believe. He will 

I 


II4 Authority 


never know whether a particular doctrine, which has for centuries 
enjoyed a wide veneration, but has in later days come to be 
assailed, is really as true as it seems to be. “This objection is 
often raised in controversy from the Roman Catholic side and has 
a specious sound. In reality its apparent force is due to the fact 
that it rests on a confusion of thought. For it confuses the act of 
faith by which the individual submits his mind and conscience to 
the authority of Jesus in the Catholic Church with the quite 
different act of acceptance of the whole system of truth as the 
Church teaches it at any given moment. ‘The first of these two 
acts is necessarily an act of private judgment pure and simple. 
The individual can only accept the faith on the ground of his own 
purely personal conviction that it is true, although that conviction 
may be very largely determined by the fact that the faith is 
accepted by others, and by the impressive spectacle of the faith 
of the Catholic Church. ‘The second act is a surrender of the 
private judgment by which the individual, having decided that 
the Catholic faith as a whole is true, proceeds to accept from the 
Church the detailed filling-in of the main outlines which he has 
already accepted. 

Now on the theory put forward in this essay the position of 
the individual is no worse than it is on the most ultramontane 
theory of ecclesiastical authority. For the determining factor in 
his acceptance of the Catholic system will be, as it must always 
be, the belief that it is the truest, and ultimately the only true, 
account of the relations of God to man. ‘This act of faith, 
rendered possible by a gift of divine grace, can never rest on any- 
thing but the personal judgment that the Catholic system as a 
whole is true. As regards the structure of Christian doctrine 
he will find, precisely as he does at present, a large body of doctrine 
and ethical teaching which is set before him with very varying 
degrees of authority. Some elements in the system will present 
themselves to him with a vast amount of testimony to their proved 
efficacy as means for enabling the believer to attain to the genuine 
religious experience of Christianity, in other words to realise com- 
munion with God through the Person of Jesus, dating back to 
the most venerable ages of the history of the Church. Some, on 
the other hand, will present themselves as no more than minor 
local regulations, judged desirable by the Church as aids to his 
private devotion. Between these two extremes there will lie a 


The Authority of the Church iTS 


certain amount of teaching which presents itself to him with 
varying degrees of authority. This he will accept as true on the 
authority of the Church ; and unless he be a competent theologian 
he has no need to trouble himself about it. He will know that 
it has behind it the guarantee that it has proved fruitful as an aid 
to the development of the Christian life ; and even if he is unable 
to find in some parts of it any assistance for his personal devotion, 
he will be content to recognise their value for others. If, on the 
other hand, he be a theologian, he will still respect the various ele- 
ments in the Catholic system as a whole merely on the strength of 
the fact that they form a part of so venerable a structure. Further, 
he will recognise that every part, in so far as it has in practice 
served to foster the spiritual life of the Church, contains an 
element of truth which all theological inquiry must account for. 
The greater the extent to which it has served that purpose, the 
greater will be the respect he will accord it. At the same time he 
will regard the Catholic faith as an organic whole, the truth of 
which is guaranteed more by its intrinsic value as proved by past 
experience than by the oracular infallibility of certain isolated 
definitions. He will indeed reverence such definitions, and he 
will reverence them the more in proportion to the extent and the 
quality of the assent they can claim. But he will recognise that 
their claim to be regarded as absolutely and finally true is not a 
matter of absolute certainty or of primary importance. It may 
be that the progress of human knowledge will lead to a better 
formulation of the most venerable articles of the faith ; but it will 
always preserve those elements in them which are the true cause 
of their power to preserve and promote the devotional life of the 
Catholic Church. It will be observed that in acting thus he will 
be acting precisely as the investigator does in any branch of science, 
who recognises that any new advance he may make must include 
all the elements of permanent truth discovered by his predecessors 
in the same field, even though it may show that their discoveries 
had not the absolute truth originally supposed. 

It should further be observed that the theologian will recognise 
that any formulation of doctrine by the Church has the highest 
claim on his respect. Even if he cannot hold its absolute truth, 
he will realise that it contains an element of truth which any new 
definition must preserve, and he will also respect the right of the 
Church to restrain him from putting forward his own views, where 


116 Authority 


they differ from the authoritative statements of the Church in such 
a manner as to disturb the faith of the simple or to lead to unedifying 
controversy. He will admit that the mere fact that a particular 
statement has been solemnly put forward by the whole Christian 
body creates a strong presumption in favour of its embodying a very 
high degree of truth, and will be careful to avoid the danger of 
denying the truth which a formula contains, even if the formula 
seems to him to be defective. 

It will certainly be objected that this view leaves the door 
open to “ Modernism.” ‘The answer is that Modernism as 
hitherto expounded has obviously undermined the foundations on 
which Christian experience rests. Ifa new type of Modernism 
were advanced, it would either have the same effect or it would not. 
If it did not (we need not concern ourselves with the question of 
the possibility of such an hypothesis), there seems no reason to 
deny that it would be a valid restatement of the essential truth of 
the Catholic system, and it would stand simply as a more accurate 
statement of those truths which it is the function of the Church 
to teach to her children in order to attain to salvation through 
Jesus. 

It may be added that the fear of ‘‘ Modernism” seems to suggest 
a lack of trust in the power of the Church to eliminate false 
teaching from her system. Jt may be desirable to restrain the 
dissemination of teaching of an unsettling kind; but the Christian 
should have sufficient confidence in the inherent strength of the 
Catholic system to view with equanimity the exploration of every 
possible avenue of inquiry. If a particular line of thought is 
really, as it seems to him at the moment, fatal to the whole content 
of Christian devotion, it will certainly come to nought. If his 
fears are unfounded, it can only lead to a fresh apprehension of the 
truth and the enrichment of Christian devotion. 


NOTES 
1. THe Hoty Roman Cuurcu 


Anglicans have tended in the past to a rather facile depreciation 
of the claims of the See of Peter. It must be admitted that the 
agerandising policy of certain Popes was largely responsible for the 
division of Christendom ; but it must also be admitted that the 


Notes 17 


See of Constantinople was by no means free of blame in the matter. 
In the same way the papal court was largely responsible for the 
rejection of the demands of the more moderate Reformers ;_ but 
the excesses of the Protestant leaders rendered the preservation of 
Christian unity impossible. If the general position put forward 
in this essay be accepted, it will follow that there is some error in 
the claims usually made on behalf of the Papacy, in view of their 
proved tendency to destroy the unity of Christendom, but also 
an element of truth in that devotion to the Holy See which has 
done so much to preserve the Catholic faith in Western Europe. 
As regards scriptural authority the Petrine claims cannot 
claim to be more than a development of the commission given by 
our Lord to St. Peter and the position held by him in the primitive 
Church ; it is only by the results that we can judge whether they 
are a legitimate development or not. Hence controversies as to 
their exact meaning are bound to prove futile. In general it may 
be said that the question at issue is whether the Papacy is to be 
regarded as the organ through which the Holy Ghost speaks 
directly to the whole Church, or whether it is the organ for articu- 
lating the experience of the Christian body as a whole, that 
experience being produced by the influence of the Holy Ghost on 
the corporate consciousness of the Church. It may seem that this 
is a somewhat subtle distinction ; but it is one of supreme practical 
importance. From the former conception is derived the tendency 
to regard the Pope as an autocratic ruler of the Church, responsible 
to God alone ;_ he has only to speak and the faithful are bound to 
obey. From the latter point of view the Pope is the representative 
of the whole Church, whose function is not to promulgate truth 
but to regulate the general line of Christian thought in so far as it 
may be necessary to save the simple from the disturbing effects 
of false teaching and to preserve that measure of uniformity in 
matters of faith and conduct which is necessary to the welfare of 
the Church. In this case he is to be regarded as holding a pastoral 
office as first among his brothers the Bishops of the Catholic 
Church. At the present time it is impossible to say which of these 
conceptions is the true one from the Roman point of view. Either 
can be made consistent with the definitions of the Vatican Council, 
and both are held in different quarters within the Roman Com- 
munion. It is clear that the former view is entirely incompatible 
with the position advanced in this essay ; but that does not justify 


118 Authority 


Anglicans in refusing to recognise the element of truth which 
may be claimed for the Papacy if it be regarded in the latter light. 
There can be no doubt that the Holy See has on many occasions 
preserved Catholicism from the gravest dangers; but it has 
always done so by acting as the voice of the Christian community 
in general as against fashionable errors. It is when the Papacy 
has claimed to speak with the direct authority of the Holy Ghost 
and without reference to Christendom as a whole that it has 
aroused that hostility which has led to or kept alive the disruption 
of Christendom. In any question of reunion the vital issue is 
whether the Church can be safeguarded against that natural 
tendency to self-aggrandisement which is the besetting vice of all 
human institutions, and which has caused the Papacy to claim 
prerogatives which large bodies of Christians have felt bound to 
reject. But such a rejection of autocratic claims need not involve 
the rejection of the view that the Papacy has a special function to 
fulfil in the life of the Church. Further, just as the authority 
of the episcopate is held to be de jure divino on the ground that by 
a process of legitimate development the episcopate has become 
the repository of the authority given to the Apostles, so it might 
be held that the Papacy possesses authority de jure divino as having 
become by a similar process the repository of a primacy held by 
St. Peter. Anglican theologians can and should be prepared to 
discuss this possibility with an open mind. But while doing so 
they cannot concede the actual claims made or presupposed by the 
majority of Roman theologians in regard to the position and 
authority of the Papacy. 


2. THe Rerticrous ExPERIENCE OF PROTESTANTISM 


In this essay for the most part only the religious experience of 
Catholicism has been considered. Obviously, however, the various 
schools of Protestantism have in history proved for many a 
means of access to God through the person of our Lord of a very 
genuine kind. On the other hand, it is to be observed that the 
dogmatic systems of historical Protestantism are showing a tendency 
to disappear, if they have not already been tacitly abandoned. 
This fact shows that the element of permanent value in them was 
not the dogmatic systems which the original Reformers regarded 
as essential. ‘“Ihis, however, is not intended to deny or to belittle 


Notes 119 


the importance of the religious experience of historical Protestantism. 
It must, however, be observed that much of it has been drawn from 
its insistence on the power of the believer to enter into immediate 
personal communion with God through Christ, and its strong 
personal devotion to the humanity of our Lord. But these or 
similar features of historical Protestantism are simply aspects of 
the Catholic faith, which the Reformers regarded as having been 
obscured by the Catholicism of the time. It must be admitted 
that to a very large extent they were right in thinking so. Yet, in 
so far as it is these elements of Protestantism which have in the 
past given it value as a means of providing the Protestant with the 
experience of Christian devotion, and are still in fact a living force 
in the Protestant bodies, the strength of Protestantism lies in the 
fact that it emphasises certain elements of Catholicism. Further, 
Protestantism, although in its positive dogmatic systems it failed 
to establish any final truth, may claim to have rendered a genuine 
service to Christianity by showing the untenable character of much 
of the old tradition of Catholicism, and by its insistence on the 
necessity of justifying Christian doctrine by the appeal to the 
Scriptures and to human reason. In the sweeping away of false 
conceptions, and establishing a truer conception of the nature of 
the means by which truth is to be apprehended, Protestantism has 
played a vital part in the life of the Church and the progress of 


mankind. 


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THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 
OF GOD 


BY LIONEL SPENCER THORNTON 


CONTENTS 


I. Tue Atrrigures or Gop . . : : : 
. The contrasted aspects of Deity, in Heth be the con- 

trast of Majesty and Friendliness . 
2. The development of these contrasts (a) in Hy Old 


Testament, (b) in the Incarnation, (c) in the hefai 
of the attributes 


3. Revelation and the attributes—T he ee of reoblaeee 
exhibits (a) a scale or series, (b) the contrast of tran- 
scendence and immanence 


II. ‘Tue Hoty Trinity . 
: The Word and the Spirit 


(a) The Christology of St. Sohn pay, on Paul. 
The Word of God and the idea of revelation . 
(b) The Spirit in the New Testament. The revela- 
tion of the Trinity ; : 
2. Personality in God : : ‘ 
Modern conceptions of Naina The religious 
background 
Personality and the Nicene formula 
Analogy from the direction of human life as crowned 
by Christian experience 
3. [wo primary difficulties 
(a) The meaning of Unity in the GH 
(b) Lhe distinction of Persons 
Repudiation of Modalism and Tri-theism 


III. Creation, Miracre AND ProvipENCE. 
AppiTionaL Note (By E. J. Bicknell) 


PAGE 
p23 


123 


127 


130 


134. 
135 


135 


137 
139 


143 


145° 
148 


“Tip God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of 
Jacob. . . . He is not the God of the dead, but of the living ; for 
all live unto him.” ‘These words of our Lord take us to the 
heart of the Bible and the revelation which it records. The 
Christian’s God is One who has to do with living men because 
He is Himself the living God. He is the Covenant-God who 
enters into the course of history and communicates the knowledge 
of Himself in a special way to a particular people, at first partially 
and in various stages, then finally and completely in the Person 
of Jesus Christ. All this is without prejudice to the truth that 
there is a wider and more general revelation of God given to all 
men, to which all religions bear witness, whose evidences are 
written in the book of nature and upon every human heart. If 
we claim that in the religious history of our race a special revelation 
occupies the foreground of the picture, nothing is to be gained by 
overlooking this far-stretching background. Yet from the point 
of view of historic Christianity the Gospel provides the clue which 
alone can interpret the riddle of God’s world-wide Self-revelation. 

The argument of this essay starts from the conclusions reached 
ina preceding essay on “ The Vindication of Religion.” Assuming 
the truth of theism, we are concerned with the content of that 
conception of God which the Christian Church has received. 
The subject falls naturally into two main parts : (i) The attributes 
of God; (ii) The Holy Trinity. In discussing these subjects 
certain pressing questions of current thought will be kept in view, 
such as the idea of revelation, the possibility of reconciling different 
aspects in the traditional doctrine of God, and the meaning of 
personality in God. 


I 
Tur ATTRIBUTES OF GoD 


1. The Contrasted Aspects of Deity 


When religion is traced back to its beginnings in the history 
of man, nothing is more striking than the dominating position 
which it appears to occupy. Religion is the thread upon which 


124 The Christian Conception of God 


are strung whole systems of cultus, custom and taboo, tribal morality 
and mythological explanation. “Thus from its first appearance 
religion is concerned with the whole man and with the whole of 
human life. But again the first stirrings of the religious impulse 
appear to take the form of definite emotional moods in which man 
reacts to the mystery in his environment and to the mystery in his 
own life. Doubtless there were even in man’s primitive experience 
a variety of emotional moods and attitudes of this general char- 
acter. But all varieties ultimately resolve themselves into two 
main types of attitude. “The object of man’s worship is terrible 
and awe-inspiring and yet in other moods is felt to be protective 
and friendly. Religion means abasement before divine majesty 
and yet fascination which draws men to seek communion with the 
divine. ‘The religious revelation given to Israel emerges out of 
this dim background and continues in its progress to exhibit these 
general characteristics. “There is the religious fear awakened by 
local theophanies or manifestations of deity, or again by the in- 
fringement of some taboo ; and on the other hand there are homely 
and joyful festivals at the local shrines. Yahweh is revealed in 
fire, thunder, and storm-cloud. He marches with the tribes to 
the destruction of his enemies ; He is a jealous God. But there 
is also another picture : the God who enters into friendly covenant 
with patriarchs and kings, who promises protection and blessing 
to the race. When Hebrew religion rises to the level of theism 
we still find these contrasted aspects of majesty on the one hand 
and homely intimacy on the other. But the combination attains 
a new significance. For in the development of prophetic mono- 
theism the majesty of God is seen ever more and more clearly to 
transcend the crude imaginations and limited horizons of primitive 
religious thought until He is known in prophetic faith to be the 
perfectly holy and righteous God who rules all the nations, the 
Creator of heaven and earth. Yet this revelation of divine tran- 
scendence does not crush out the more homely aspects of religion. 
Rather those aspects are purified of their grosser elements and 
reappear in deeper and more penetrating forms. 

Meanwhile the religion of Israel, like other religions, concerned 
itself with a people and all its national and local interests. But, 
unlike most other religions, it overleapt the boundaries of these 
restricted interests and preoccupations and provided an interpreta- 
tion of Israel’s history and destiny which gave to that people an 


The Attributes of God 125 


unparalleled consciousness of divine mission and religious vocation. 
All the changing events of national experience are woven into the 
texture of this historical interpretation by a long succession of 
prophets and prophetic writers. Like other Semitic peoples they 
explained all events in terms of direct causation by the will of the 
deity. But the action of the divine will is related to a moral 
purpose which has nothing capricious or arbitrary about it. It is 
this purpose which gives unity and significance to history and to 
Israel’s part in history. “Thus through a prophetic interpretation 
of history in terms of divine purpose there is a steady enlargement 
of horizon and an enrichment in the content of religion and of 
religious ideas. “The horizon is enlarged to include all events, 
international as well as national, within the scope of divine govern- 
ment. National interests are thus transcended and moral interests 
are made supreme. Once this point is reached, it involves a great 
deal more. “The Lord of history is the moral Governor of the 
world, the Creator of the universe, the only true object of worship. 
Thus religion is enriched by entering into partnership with 
morality and reason, and a conception of God is reached which can 
satisfy all the awakening faculties of man. For in the last resort 
the higher needs of man cannot be separated. We cannot rest 
permanently in a moral revelation however sublime, unless it 
expresses the character of One who is the ground of our lives and 
of the universe in which we live. Nor could we yield the fullest 
worship of heart and reason to a Being who did not manifest His 
will in the form of a moral purpose controlling and overruling the 
course of events by which our destinies are shaped. 

Now without going further at this stage into the biblical 
conception of God, we can see that the broad facts of Hebrew 
monotheism have already decided some of the conditions of our 
knowledge of God and the limitations which the subject imposes 
upon human language. For the God who is disclosed to us in 
Old Testament prophecy is already in effect the God of Christian 
theism. He is the supreme Reality behind all the phenomena of 
sense and the source of all intuitions of the human spirit. “The 
external world-process and the interior world of human experience 
must both alike be traced to Him. The religious impulse can 
find adequate satisfaction only in such a God—One who is the 
ground of all forms of our experience, emotional, moral and 
rational. Consequently, when we try to state the content of our 


126 The Christian Conception of God 


conception of God, such a statement must be in terms which cover 
all the various fields of our experience. Now since there is a great 
diversity in the forms of human experience, our approach to the 
idea of God must be made along a number of different lines, each 
of which is an attempt to give rational form to some definite part 
of experience. ‘These different lines of approach give us what are 
called the attributes of God. We can never attain to a completely 
synthetic view of what God has revealed Himself to be. For that 
would involve a level of unified knowledge which can belong to 
none but to God Himself. Such a simple and simultaneous know- 
ledge of what God is must exist in God Himself. But we on our 
part must be content to approach the sanctuary from the outside 
and from a number of different points of view. But if this is our 
necessary starting-point it is also true that as we seek to penetrate 
from the circumference to the centre we find the lines of approach 
to be convergent. Contrasted attributes are really interdependent 
and are mutually necessary to one another. But here the pro- 
portion of truth often suffers from the inadequacy of our minds to 
grasp the whole. All words that we can use are inadequate and 
more or less anthropomorphic in character, relating God either by 
affirmation or negation to human experience. We cannot avoid 
this difficulty. But it calls for a severe discipline of the mind and 
not least by criticism of such conventions of thought as happen 
to be familiar or congenial to ourselves or to the age in which we 
live. For example, it has often been too readily assumed that, in 
dealing with moral qualities or categories which enter deeply into 
human experience, transference of such ideas from a human to 
a divine context can be effected with security in proportion to the 
familiarity of the ideas. It has sometimes escaped men’s observa- 
tion that they have been defective in their grasp upon those very 
ideas from which they have argued. Failure to realise this has 
been in part due to that very familiarity which has been the ground 
of confidence. It is easy to detect this danger in the thought of 
the past. It is not so easy to remember that it is still operative. 
When we look back over Christian thought about God we see, in 
different ages of history, special prominence given to this or that 
particular idea. “Thus we have the impassible divine substance or 
nature of Greek theology, the conceptions of legal justice which 
have characterised Latin theology through many centuries of its 
history, or again ideas of the omnipotent sovereign will of God 


The Attributes of God 127 


dominating men’s minds in the age of the Renaissance and the 
Reformation. The currents of thought in our own age are 
running strongly in other directions and largely in reaction from 
these ideas. In the necessary reconstruction we must needs be on 
our guard against being content with a mere swing of the theological 
pendulum, replacing the ideas of Augustine, Anselm, and Calvin 
by some modern version of Marcion’s gospel. 


2. The Development of these Contrasts 


If we return now to our starting-point, the characteristics of 
Hebrew monotheism as it emerged from its origins in more 
primitive religion, there is another characteristic which needs 
further consideration. Reference has been made to two con- 
trasted aspects of deity which are clearly developed in Hebrew 
prophecy, but which can be traced back to two different kinds of 
emotional mood everywhere present and operative in the religious 
experience of mankind. ‘The contrast in question—between the 
majesty of God on the one hand and His willingness to enter into 
intimate relations with His creatures on the other—is one which 
can be traced through the whole course of revelation in the 
Scriptures. God is holy and righteous, yet also loving and gracious. 
He is Judge and King, yet also Father and Saviour. He is Creator 
of the world and Sovereign over the nations, yet He dwells with 
the humble and lowly in heart and the contrite in spirit. But once 
more, these ideas are not simply held in contrast. Again and 
again they are blended in one experience. In the experience 
portrayed in Psalm cxxxix. the writer’s conviction of God’s near- 
ness to and knowledge of his own soul is blended with a parallel 
conviction of God’s omnipresence and omniscience with regard to 
the world as a whole ; and the two ideas appear to reinforce one 
another in his mind. In the book of Job, which perhaps more 
than any other part of Scripture emphasises the inscrutable majesty 
and power of the Creator, it is precisely by a revelation of this 
aspect of the Godhead that an answer is given to all Job’s searching 
questions about the divine handling of his individual life. More- 
over, this experience of Job’s is in line with the experiences through 
which some of the great prophets received their call. Isaiah and 
Ezekiel witness a theophany of the divine holiness and glory and 
then a Voice speaks to them and they are given a personal mission. 


128 The Christian Conception of God 


As the revelation of God to Israel moved forward it became 
more universal in form and at the same time more effectively con- 
cerned with individual worth and destiny, more penetrative of the 
spirit of man and on the other hand more transcendent of this world- 
order. When we pass to the New Testament and the teaching 
of our Lord, we find that the heavenly Father of whom He spoke 
stands in a universal relationship to all men without respect of 
persons. Yet this relationship reaches to the heart of man more 
completely than was possible under the Old Covenant. ‘The 
souls of sinful men and women are now set in concentrated rays of 
light and seen to be mysterious treasure, over which the Heart of 
God yearns and travails. Moreover, these things are not simply 
set forth in idea. “They’are already in operation. ‘They are part 
of the hidden reality of a Kingdom, which is here and now present 
as the action of God upon the world. Christ Himself is the truth 
of the Kingdom which He preaches. This Kingdom is pro- 
claimed in the language of apocalyptic as something which alto- 
gether transcends the course of history and which finally breaks 
the bonds of mere nationalism. Its claim is absolute against every 
earthly counter-claim. Yet this Kingdom has come down to 
earth in the human form of Jesus Christ and it is actualised in the 
fellowship of His little flock. Thus the Incarnation was the final 
ratification of the principle that God is revealed to us under 
contrasted aspects. In the very inadequate language of theology 
we say that God is both transcendent and immanent. But these 
two ideas are not sheer opposites in an insoluble contradiction. 
‘They exemplify that “ double polarity ” of Christianity with which 
Baron von Hiigel has made us familiar. “The Incarnation not 
only ratified this principle of a union of opposites. It embodied 
the principle ina new form. Christianity is the universal religion, 
and at the same time it is the religion which raises individual 
personality to its highest power. In the New Testament we see 
the creation of a wholly new experience of fellowship between 
God and man reaching down to the roots of the human spirit. Yet 
the individual is thus recreated within the compass of a religious 
movement which breaks through all the old particularist limita- 
tions and claims for itself universal scope as the bearer of an absolute 
and final revelation of God. 

‘The immediate effect, therefore, of God’s love “‘ shed abroad 
in our hearts”” was an immense enlargement and enrichment of 


The Attributes of God 129 


the whole idea of God. The idea now called for a new language 
in which it could be expressed. ‘The search for such language 
already appears in some of the great doctrinal passages in the 
writings of St. Paul and St. John. As the development of 
Christian thought proceeded, it was impelled to borrow from 
philesophy’s vocabulary of abstract words and impersonal categories 
of thought. Only by the use of such language, it was found, could 
justice be done to a revelation which was, as given to experience, 
intensely personal and concrete in form. ‘Thus in the traditional 
list of the divine attributes there is a large proportion of such abstract 
and impersonal terms side by side with others which are drawn 
more directly from the vivid, personal language of religious 
experience. Again, although we are not as yet primarily con- 
cerned with the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the formulation of 
that doctrine provides a further illustration of what has been said. 
To sum up, the limitations of the human mind and the facts of 
revelation alike require that the content of the idea of God should 
be formulated under a variety of aspects. No true simplification 
is effected by attempts to reduce the diversity of our religious 
experience, or to submerge under the dominance of any one idea 
the diversity of divine attributes which reflect that experience. 
Moreover, Christian theism, as the trustee of all religious revela- 
tion, bears witness to a fundamental duality running through all 
our experience of God ; and the contrasts which this experience 
implies are ultimately irreducible facts, of which theology is bound 
to take account. ‘These considerations impress themselves upon 
the mind in a great variety of ways. God guides the stars and He 
also touches the heart. He embraces all the worlds and He is also 
the Voice that speaks in Jesus Christ. He is to be known in His 
cosmic relations through the severe impersonal studies of science 
and philosophy. Yet He can be vividly known to each one of us 
in the penetrating sway of conscience and in the hidden depths of 
prayer. We know Him through very varied schools of discipline 
and through many channels of revelation. None of these can be 
left out of account. For all contribute to the enrichment of each 
and every particular field of experience with which as individuals 
we may be most concerned. 


130 The Christian Conception of God 


3. Revelation and the Attributes 


Much light is thrown upon these questions by two principles 
of great importance in the speculative thought of to-day. “These 
are (a) the principle that there are different grades in the structure 
of reality ; and (4) the principle that all knowledge is trans- 
subjective. Both of these principles illuminate the religious con- 
cept of revelation and have an important bearing upon the whole 
subject of the divine attributes.t 

(a) It is the glory of Christianity that God has been revealed 
to us in terms of a human life ; because humanity is what stands 
nearest tous. But if we consider man’s place in the world-process 
this must mean a great deal more. For man is a microcosm of 
nature, and human life is the meeting-point of an inner world of 
spirit with the external world through all its levels. Further, the 
revelation of God in Christ is an historical revelation and, on any 
Christian interpretation, must be regarded as occupying the centre 
of history. Its universality is exhibited upon the background of 
the ages, through which its eternal principles are refracted both 
forwards and backwards for our clearer understanding. Here, 
then, we have a series—Nature, Man, History, the Incarnation— 
a series which forms a graded sequence with interconnections. 
‘The four factors in the sequence taken together provide all the 
data we possess for our knowledge of God. Revelation in its 
widest sense must be spread over the whole of this field and through 
all its stages and levels. Now it is precisely this fact which is 
represented in what are called the attributes of God. Moreover, 
as the different stages and levels of revelation are interconnected, 
so must It be with the attributes. “There is here a real parallelism 
which is worthy of notice. 

If we consider the attributes from this point of view we find, 
in the first place, that for Christian thought God is above the whole 
order of nature and the historical process of events which is un- 
folded upon nature’s system. He is infinitely more than can ever 
be apprehended by man, the microcosm of nature and the subject 

1 For the first point cp. the recent Gifford lectures, Space, Time and Deity 
by Prof. Alexander and Emergent Evolution by C. Lloyd Morgan; also 
W. Temple, Christus Veritas, ch. i., and F. W. Butler, Christianity and History, 
cc. i, and ii. For the second point cp. Von Higel, Essays and Addresses, 


pp. 51-57, and L. A. Reid, Knowledge and Truth (a recent criticism of 
the “‘ new realist,’’ “‘ critical realist’? and other m dern theories of knowledge). 


The Attributes of God ie 


of history, either through the medium of the external world and 
its temporal processes or through man’s own inner life. God 
must for ever be contrasted with all the positive content of these 
things. “This is the principle of negation. We do not know 
what God is in His ultimate Being. Such knowledge of Him as 
we possess is as a flicker of light upon a background of cloud and 
mystery. He is infinite, eternal, ineffable, absolute, inscrutable, 
wholly beyond this world of our experience and not subject to its 
changes and chances. In form these attributes are negative ; 
but their meaning for us is not simply negative. They are symbols 
of God’s greatness and of our smallness, through which the 
attention of the mind is strained towards the Object of all desire. 
But, secondly, there is another knowledge of God which is 
mediated to us through the same series of our temporal experience. 
We may know the Creator through His creation, however in- 
adequately, yet with sufficient clearness and certainty to satisfy 
the cravings of the human spirit. God is revealed through all 
levels of creation in the measure which is possible to each level. 
What He possesses as an undivided treasure is refracted through 
nature and man in an ascending scale. God possesses in a more 
eminent sense all the true goods which exist in this world, all ful- 
ness of energy, life, mind and personality. He is rational, free, 
self-determining Spirit. In Him are realised all the values which 
these words connote. ‘Thirdly, God is in active relations with 
His creation through all its stages as its ground, cause, and sustainer. 
All processes and events of the temporal order are within the com- 
pass of His knowledge and the control of His will. So, too, with 
the spiritual life of man and the expression of that life in society 
and in history. In this sphere also man can recognise what God 
is, both by contrast with himself and through the best in himself. 
God stands to man in a series of relations as Creator to creature, 
Deity to worshipper, Lawgiver to conscience, Sinless to sinful. 
These relations of contrast are asserted when we speak of God’s 
majesty and glory, of His holiness, righteousness and goodness, of 
His perfect beatitude. Finally, through the Incarnation in its 
whole context and issues God is revealed as Love and Mercy, as 
Father, Saviour and Friend. 

In this survey of the attributes we see a sequence which 
corresponds broadly to the factors or stages through which revela- 
tion is mediated. ‘We move from the negative to the positive, 


132 The Christian Conception of God 


from the abstract to the concrete, from transcendence to im- 
manence, from the limitations of our knowledge to the light of 
positive revelation ; from nature to man as set in the order of 
nature and then to man on the field of history, from man in the 
social order of history to man the individual recognising his God 
through religious and moral intuitions ; finally from man and his 
aspirations to their fulfilment in the Incarnation. 

(4) A prevailing characteristic of thought in the nineteenth 
century was its tendency to seek for an explanation of the world 
in terms of some one comparatively simple idea either of causation 
or of development. Such a principle the mechanistic theory 
seemed at one time to provide, or, again, the idea of evolution con- 
ceived as the continuous and inevitable unfolding of what existed 
in germ or in essence from the first. In all this the spell of 
Descartes’ “‘ clear and distinct idea” was still potent. But as the 
sciences steadily won their way to autonomy, this method became 
less and less adequate. Now we are faced with a new conception 
of reality in the graded series of matter, life, mind and spirit which 
the hierarchy of sciences discloses. “This change of outlook is 
driving out the old monistic theories of knowledge. Descartes 
left the awkward legacy of an unresolved dualism between subject 
and object. Upon this fierce onslaughts have been made ever 
since and are still being made Yet even Professor Alexander, 
who surely sings the swan-song of evolutionary monism, is unable 
to eliminate this dualism of subject and object.2. Each grade of 
reality has its own “system of reference” and lays upon the 
knower its own categories of thought. ‘The real yields up its 
secrets only to those who accept it as something given, to which 
the mind must be receptive. Now here we gain a flood of light 
upon the whole idea of revelation, which comes forth from its 
place in theology to claim a wider field. “This given-ness of the. 
objects of knowledge persisting over every stage of so vastly varied 
a range throws a new meaning into the question as to what sort 
of knowledge we may possess in a revelation of God. At every 
step in the scale the given reveals itself to mind as something of 
which we may have real knowledge ; and yet in such a way that 
our knowledge is never complete. Knowledge is trustworthy as 
far as it goes ; yet the object always escapes from the knower’s net. 


1 E.g. by the American “ New Realists”” and in the philosophy of Croce. 
2 Space, Time and Deity, vol. ii. bk. ili. ch. iv. B., pp. rog—115. 


The Attributes of God 133 


There is always attainable a degree of certainty sufficient for a 
further advance. But there is always an unsolved mystery left 
over. “The higher we go in the scale of revelation the more 
significance this double principle attaches to itself. Moreover, 
throughout the whole series, consciousness of mystery remaining in 
no way conflicts with an assured confidence of knowledge already 
attained. We may even suggest that of these two characteristics 
the one is an ingredient in the other. “The things which we feel 
are most worth knowing are known not as solved problems but as 
fresh vantage-grounds, providing new horizons and fascinating 
fields for further exploration. ‘The more we are at home in the 
world which we know, the more strange and mysterious it is to us. 
How much more, then, is this likely to be true in the knowledge 
of that Being, who is the ground of all that is and all that knows, the 
source of all revelation and the all-inclusive object of knowledge. 
It is this truth which is reflected in the contrast of transcendent 
mystery and condescending love, which we have found to be 
a permanent factor in religious experience and in that intellectual 
formulation of the attributes, which endeavours to do justice to 
such experience. But this is not the whole truth. It has its com- 
plement in the fact that, unlike all finite objects of knowledge, God 
is Himself the ground of the knower. As the ground of all our 
experience He is less strange to us than any finite creature can be. 
He comes as the infinite Creator to the rescue of our finite powers 
and embraces our aspirations with immense condescension. “The 
paradox of revelation has its reverse side. He who is wholly 
beyond us is infinitely near. “The Creator’s love is more native 
to our spirits than any affinity of His creatures can be. 

The conception of revelation outlined above cuts across certain 
currents of theological thought which have been running strongly 
since Ritschl’s day. “These were congenial to that whole type of 
thought which we have seen to be characteristic of the last century. 
A variety of causes, into which we need not here inquire, led men 
to seek, in the break-up of traditional foundations, for some one 
clear and simple foundation upon which to build anew. “Uhey 
found this in the human figure of our Lord and in the moral 
revelation of divine love disclosed in His life and teaching. “They 
rightly saw that here if anywhere the light of revelation shone most 
clearly. But they did not sufficiently consider the fact that what 
is in itself most luminous will not remain luminous if it is taken out 


134 The Christian Conception of God 


of itscontext. "The context of Jesus Christ is all that we can know 
of nature, man and history. ‘The context of divine love is all 
that we can know of God at all levels of reality and through all 
channels of knowledge. “The Gospel is too tremendous to be 
apprehended on any narrower stage, and that just because the 
revelation of God’s love in Christ transcends all other stages of 
revelation and is the culminating point of the whole series. Again, 
underlying all these considerations is the fact that religion makes 
its ultimate appeal to the whole of human nature. Religion, 
indeed, has its roots in emotional types of experience. But it was, 
as we have seen, the special province of Hebrew prophecy to bring 
religion and morality into permanent alliance in such a way that 
religion itself might ultimately claim the whole of human nature 
and so be able to justify itself in satisfying the claims of both 
morality and reason. In the Old Testament revelation the 
emphasis remains upon the moral response to God, that is to say 
upon religion moralized in the form of obedience to the Law. 
In the Gospel revelation of divine love religion becomes com- 
pletely transcendent of morality, whilst taking morality up into 
itself and transfiguring its character. “Thus the eternal fascination 
of religion, which consists in man’s deepest levels of desire being 
met and satisfied by the self-communication of the divine—this is 
now charged with moral quality and meaning ; and morality itself 
in turn is fused with mystical and emotional power. ‘This is the 
peculiar ethos of the New Testament. It is summed up in the 
word cyan, the most pregnant word of apostolic Christianity. 
We therefore feel rightly that love is the most significant of all 
the aspects under which God is revealed to us. But it is so, not 
as an idea which excludes other ideas, but as a ray of light which 
illuminates everything which it touches. 


Il 
Tue Hoty Trinity 


The Catholic doctrine of the Holy Trinity is believed by the 
individual Christian in the first instance on authority. It is the 
tradition to which he has been delivered at his baptism. He has 
accepted it in accepting the general trustworthiness of the Church’s 
mental outlook and the body of experience which that outlook 
represents. He continues in this faith because his own religious 
experience corroborates the value of what he has received. But in 


The Holy Trinity ack 


the third place, in so far as he reflects upon the contents of his 
religious beliefs, he must necessarily seek to understand the Church’s 
doctrine with the help of such light as can be obtained from human 
knowledge asa whole. It is with this third stage that we are here 
mainly concerned.1 


1. The Word and the Spirit 


It is a familiar thought that revelation and inspiration are 
complementary ideas ; that the Word of God aptat Deum homint 
and that the Spirit of God aptat hominem Deo In other words, 
all revelation may be regarded from the side of the object revealed 
and also from the side of the recipient of the revelation. “Thus 
we think of God’s self-revelation as an objective manifestation 
mediated through nature, history, and the life of man. But this 
idea requires for its counterpart an interior unfolding of man’s 
powers of spiritual apprehension. “These two conceptions provide 
a background for the Christian belief that Jesus Christ is the 
revealing Word of God and that the revelation thus given has been 
committed to a community of persons whose inner life is quickened 
and illuminated by the Holy Spirit. 

(a) In theology the doctrine that Christ is the Logos or Word 
of God has from the first had two contexts, both of which are to be 
found in the Prologue of St. John’s Gospel. “There the Word is 
the author of creation and the light which enlightens mankind 
through a revelation given in the order of nature. But the Word 
is also, in the same passage, said to have been manifested in history 
to His own people, in a process whose climax was the Incarnation. 
Following part of St. John’s thought we may therefore regard the 
revelation in Jesus Christ as the goal towards which all earlier and 
lower stages of revelation were tending. ‘Lhe conception of 
Christ as the goal of the world-process conceived as a single divine 
plan unfolding through the ages is also one of the leading ideas in 
the Epistle to the Ephesians. The word there used indicates, 
not that our Lord is the last term in a series, but that He is the 
summation of the whole series. He includes in Himself all the 


1 The writer is not here concerned to raise, still less to prejudge, questions 
concerning the respective functions of authority, faith and reason in religion. 
The remarks in the text are confined to a general statement of facts. 

2 The phrases are taken from Du Bose, The Gospel in the Gospels, Part Tic: 

8 Eph. i. 103 cp. also zd. iv. 13. 


136 The Christian Conception of God 


content of revelation as exhibited through all its stages. He is 
the final expression of the purpose of God as disclosed in nature, 
man and history. He is the “perfect Man.” But we cannot 
rest satisfied with such an idea. ‘There isa correlative truth stated 
emphatically by St. Paul and St. John. Creation is not only 
“unto Him”; it is also “through Him” and “in Him.” He 
is not only the substance of all revelation given to man and its 
ultimate meaning. He is also the ground of the whole created 
order through which revelation comes. “The Christ of the New 
Testament is not evolutionary precisely because He is the Word, 
the absolute revelation. ‘This antithesis becomes clear if we follow 
up the conception of revelation already outlined in this essay. In 
all revelation there is a disclosure to man of some aspect of reality 
which yet transcends our power of knowing. As we ascend the 
scale that which is given to knowledge increasingly transcends and 
escapes from the dissecting analysis of intellect ; and yet at the same 
time comes ever closer to what lies within and at the root of man’s 
most significant experiences. “Thus at the top of the scale truth, 
beauty and goodness have infinitely larger meanings than we can 
ever findinthem. Yet they correspond to our deepest intuitions, 
and are not only the ends which we seek but the grounds of our 
seeking. “They are always beyond us and yet always with us. 
‘They are wholly native to our minds and yet altogether transcend 
every sequence in our mental and moral life. But they are only 
rays of that “ light which lighteth every man,” who is the Way, 
the Truth and the Life. 

It follows that if Christ is the summation of that series in which 
such values appear and the goal towards which they point us, then 
the double principle of revelation must reach in Him its final and 
absolute expression. He sums the series of revelation because 
He transcends it entirely. He spans all avenues of revelation 
because He is the supreme Revealer, the personal Word, who is 
the source of all partial utterances of revelation and of all particular 
parts and sequences of that temporal order through which they are 
mediated to us. “The Christ of history stands in an_ historical 
succession; yet He cannot be explained from within it. He 
enters It ab extra ; and, to say the least, such an idea appears both 
rational and intelligible on the view that all revelation exhibits 
characteristics of transcendence. A previous essay has urged that 

1 Col. i. rs—17 3 Johni. 1-4. 


The Holy Trinity 137 


Nature and man are not self-explanatory, that both point to 
a supernatural world which is the ground of this world, and again 
that man himself belongs to both of these worlds.t It is in virtue 
of such considerations that man appears pre-eminently fitted to be 
the recipient of a revelation from that supernatural order. Now 
the Johannine doctrine that Christ is the Word made flesh declares 
that the whole revelation of God to man, the final summation of 
all that man can know of God, was projected into human life at 
a point in the historical sequence in the Person of Christ? “The 
possibility of such an event St. John finds in the fact that He who 
enters thus into human nature is Himself the author and sustainer 
of the cosmic process, of that humanity which He took and of 
that historical succession into which He entered. “In the 
beginning was the word and the word was with God and the 
word was God.” From this cycle of Johannine ideas springs 
that theological tradition which connects together Creation and 
Incarnation as two stages in one divine action, and which finds the 
ground of both in the deity of the Word or Son of God. St. Paul 
reached the same result, but along a different line of approach. 
Here the experience of redemption from sin was the principle 
governing the process of interpretation. Christ not only reveals 
God toman; Healso redeems manto God. He brings down the 
supernatural to man and also raises man to that supernatural order. 
Where these two lines of thought meet, as they did conspicuously 
in St. Athanasius, there theology most truly reflects the balance 
of the New Testament. But both lead to the same conclusion. 
For it is through the experience of Christ’s redeeming action that 
God’s character is revealed to us; and the substance of the 
revelation is that God is redeeming Love. The conclusion in 
both cases is that God is revealed to man and man is redeemed to 
God by One who is Himself within the life and being of God. 
(1) The idea of revelation requires for its counterpart the 
corresponding idea of inspiration. Man is indeed fitted to be the 
recipient of a revelation by the fact that he is made in the image of 
the Word ; since the Word is alike the author of man’s being and 
the ground and substance of that revelation which is made to him. 


1 Essay II. 

2 This in no way precludes us from recognising the limitations of Christ’s 
earthly life ; cp. what was said above on the “‘context’’ of the revelation in 
Christ, pp. 133, 134. 


138 The Christian Conception of God 


Nevertheless, since what is given in revelation is from a super- 
natural source, man stands in need of divine assistance or grace 
from the same supernatural source, that he may be able to appre- 
hend what is revealed. ‘This process of inspiration entering into 
the spirit and life of man goes forward part passu with all stages of 
revelation. It is as wide in scope and as diverse in form as we 
have found revelation to be. But in particular, as the Old 
‘Testament revelation developed, Jewish thought distinguished the 
Spirit from the Word and looked forward to a full outpouring of 
the Spirit as a special mark of the Messianic Kingdom. ‘This 
hope was fulfilled in the Pentecostal experience of the apostolic 
Church. ‘The recipients of this experience traced the gift of the 
Spirit to their incarnate Lord, and found in the fellowship of the 
Spirit a new life whereby they were enabled to appropriate the 
meaning of that revelation which had been given in Christ. In 
the place of that objective historical manifestation of divine love 
in terms of human life which they had seen in Christ they now 
possessed an interior presence of indwelling love in the fellowship 
of the Christian community ‘This presence was personal in its 
action, creating a new social fellowship and renewing the life of 
individuals within that fellowship. The Spirit experienced as 
the source of such rich personal values was understood to be 
Himself personal! and yet distinguished from the incarnate Lord, 
whose revealing life He illuminated and whose historical redeeming 
action He transmuted into the form of an abiding interior principle 
of sanctification. ‘There were, therefore, in this new cycle of 
experience two distinct features. God has revealed Himself 
through the redeeming action of Christ ; and God so revealed is 
present in the Christian community and in its individual members 
through the gift of the Spirit. “The love of the Father is revealed 
in the grace of the Son ; and the grace of the Son is possessed and - 
enjoyed in the communion of the Spirit.? 

It does not fall within the scope of this essay to trace in full the 
development of the doctrine of the Trinity in the early Church 
until it reached its final expression in the fourth century. In the 
New ‘Testament we find no formulated doctrine ; but rather the 
materials for such a doctrine taking shape in the form ofa developing 


1 £.g. such phrases as évepyet . . . xaOdo BobAetar in 1 Cor. xii. 11 
suggest an active subject rather than an impersonal influence. Still more 
definite is the use of the pronoun éxeivog in John xiv.—xvi. 


9° 


Seo akin TA, 


The Holy Trinity 139 


experience which is already feeling its way vigorously towards 
adequate intellectual expression. “This stage is already manifest 
in the Pauline epistles. It reaches its maturest expression in 
St. John’s Gospel. Here Father, Son and Holy Spirit are Three 
“Subjects” or “ Persons’; and on the other hand the dis- 
tinctions drawn between the Three are balanced by emphatic 
statements of divine unity and mutual relationship. “The develop- 
ment of patristic thought consisted in a series of attempts to do 
justice to such language and still more to the apostolic experience 
which lay behind it. Not all of such attempts were successful ; 
each advance was made at the price of many abortive experiments 
But the controlling principles of the process are sufficiently clear. 
The twofold experience of redemption through Christ and of new 
life in the fellowship of the Spirit is the continuous link between 
the apostolic Church and the Church of Tertullian and Ongen, 
and again of Athanasius, Basil and Augustine. 


2. Personality in God 


It has often been pointed out that to the influence of Christianity 
must be assigned a large part in the development of modern concep- 
tions of personality. “The case is somewhat parallel to that of 
another comparatively modern conception, that of history. In 
both cases the development of the Christian idea of God in the 
Bible and in theology has had much to do with the emergence of 
these conceptions. Of history something has already been said in 
this essay. “The question of personality confronts us in any discus- 
sion of the doctrine of the Trinity. In its modern connotation 
personality probably includes two main aspects. On the one hand 
there is the idea of mental life organised in relation to a conscious 
centre. What is distinctive of man as an individual, on this view, 
is self-consciousness. But on the other hand consciousness of self 
as a centre of mental life already involves the further idea of other 
such centres of consciousness. Personality has a sociological as 
well as a psychological significance. It involves the idea of rela- 
tionship with other-than-self. It has a social as well as an individual 
aspect. It is awareness of self and of not-self. It means self- 
regarding reflection and activity on the one hand, and capacity for 
passing out of self into social relationships on the other. 

There can be no reasonable doubt that religion has played an 


140 The Christian Conception of God 


important part in the long process of thought which lies behind 
these developed ideas. But the connection between the two ideas 
of God and of personality in human life becomes strikingly manifest 
if we concentrate attention upon the New Testament and the early 
Church. Here we see blossoming forth new conceptions of God, 
of society and of individual life. These are three aspects of one 
creative experience, three strands intertwined. We see the 
Christian community emerge as a new sociological factor, a new 
experience of fellowship. We see also the Christian individual 
with a new consciousness of his individual worth and ends and of 
their possibility of attainment. A deeper meaning for personality in 
both its individual and social aspects has begun. ‘Thirdly, within 
the same movement there emerges a new conception of God, in 
which the living, personal God of earlier revelation becomes known 
as a fellowship of Persons. We must now follow up this clue of 
a connection between personality in God and in man. 

Any attempt to translate the formula of Three Persons in One 
Substance into modern language is beset with acute difficulties. 
For example, Descartes has given to the idea of “ consciousness ”’ 
a new meaning and emphasis for us which differentiates our habits 
of thought from those of the Nicene Fathers. Such a phrase as 
“Three Centres of One Consciousness”’ represents a bold attempt 
to grapple with this difficulty... But do we know enough of 
consciousness to be quite sure of our ground? No formula can 
be adequate. But, in view of the fluid state of modern psychology, 
it would perhaps be better to avoid the word “ consciousness ” 
altogether and to speak of Three Centres of One Activity? In the 
case of human personality relationship can exist only between 
separate individuals. “The Nicene formula, and any modern 
equivalent, must mean that such relationship exists in God, but 
not as between three individuals. ‘The three centres of relation-. 
ship are here comprehended within the unity of One Absolute 
Activity. Such a statement presupposes that personality exists in 
God after a manner to which human personality offers some 
analogy, but in a more eminent sense as is the case with all positive 
statements about God.? ‘The main difference would seem to be 


1 Bishop Temple in Christus Veritas. 

2 The word “ Activity’ was suggested to me by Professor A. E. Taylor, 
to whose kind criticism this essay owes much. 

3 As Professor C. C. J. Webb well says, we speak of ‘‘ Personality in God ” 
rather than ‘‘ the Personality of God.” See his God and Personality. 


The Holy Trinity 141 


that characteristics and functions, which at the human level of 
personality appear in tension and conflict as antithetical tendencies, 
exist in God within a unity and harmony which transcend all 
analogies from human experience. In man the individual and 
social aspects of personality are in tension and conflict. In God 
the self-regarding and other-regarding aspects of personality are 
integrated within the unity of one mental life. Within this unity 
there may indeed be tension, deeper tension than we can know. 
But if so it is tension within harmony. We can dimly perceive 
that this means a higher kind of personality than ours. Moreover, 
although the mystery of the Blessed Trinity far transcends our 
powers of understanding, yet there are features of human experience 
which point directly towards the truth of the mystery. 

We turn naturally to the special forms of experience within 
which the Christian conception of God as a Trinity first appears 
and to which reference has already been made! Christianity 
came into the world as a way of life with a specific doctrine of 
life? Man attains his true self through the principle of sacrifice 
or dying to self. By this means he may transcend the purely 
self-regarding aspect of personality and find a larger life of fellow- 
ship. ‘The New Testament shows this transcendence of the self- 
regarding ego as the Way of the Cross which our Lord inculcated 
and which He Himself followed out, fulfilling that Way to the 
uttermost in His death. ‘The same principle of self-transcendence 
is also set forth as something actually and vividly realised in 
experience by the early Christian community. It was realised in 
the fellowship of the Spirit and was recognised to be an operation 
of the Spirit. But what the Spirit wrought in the Christian life 
was a mystical union with Christ, whereby the self-transcending 
power of Christ’s life passed into the soul and, bursting through 
its natural bonds of selfishness, carried it up to a supernatural 
level of love, where the dualism of self and other was in principle 
already solved. It was not, however, solved by the annihilation 
of self, nor by the merging of the individual’s personality in the 
community, nor again by the absorption of that personality into 
the life of God in any pantheistic sense. What is characteristic, 
for example, of St. Paul’s doctrine of mystical union is exactly the 
reverse of such absorption. ‘The transcendence of self which is 


1 See above, pp. 139 f. 
2 Cp. Royce, The Problem of Christianity, vol. i. 


142 The Christian Conception of God 


there described leads to the transfiguration of self. “I live, yet 
no longer J but Christ liveth in me; and that life which I now 
live in the flesh I live by faith which is in the Son of God. . . .” 
‘*T can do all things in Him that strengtheneth me.” Where life 
is all grace, all Christ, all death to self, there also it means enlarge- 
ment and enrichment of self. Now this supernatural experience, 
as we must call it, carries us both in promise and in fulfilment to 
a level beyond the range of natural human capacity. “The develop- 
ment of culture and civilisation in itself shews no tendency to 
overcome the tensions existing between the individual and society 
and again between society as a whole and smaller groups within it. 
On the contrary the development of human society leads of itself 
to increasing stress and complexity. “The evolutionary process 
as a whole appears to be characterised on the one hand by increase 
of complexity and on the other hand by the emergence, at various 
stages, of new factors which take control of this growing com- 
plexity.2. On this view the Christian experience of grace, union 
with Christ and the fellowship of the Spirit, might be regarded as 
the emergence in, or rather entrance into, the series of a yet 
higher factor, which takes control of the complexities of self- 
conscious human personality. 

This Christian doctrine of life sets the movement of human 
life in train towards a goal already achieved in Christ, who in this 
way, as Pauline Christology declares, sums up in Himself the cosmic 
process. As has already been said, however, Christ is not only 
the goal but also the ground of this process in the developed teaching 
of St. Paul and St. John.? ‘The truth of this now appears from 
another point of view. What Christian experience and the New 
‘Testament alike declare to be the true direction of human life, 
the higher possibility of self-conscious personality under the action 
of divine grace, this Christian theology from St. Paul onwards 
declares to be, not simply achieved within the historical order in 
the life of Christ and in process of attainment in the fellowship 
of the Spirit, but already existing in the life of God and in the 
eternal activities which belong to that life. The harmony of 
reciprocal personal relationships, which when carried to its highest 


1 This point has been worked out at length by Royce. See op. cit. 
* On this point cp. J. Y. Simpson, Man and the Attainment of Immortality, 
CC. 1X.—Xle 


3 Cp. pp. 135-137 above. 


The Holy Trinity 143 


level is called &y&my in the New Testament, this is the true end of 
man because it is the eternal mode of God’s life. ‘The inner 
reality of this mystery of Triune Love is something utterly beyond 
us. All thought and speech are helpless and impotent before it. 
Yet this same mystery is utterly near to us. For all avenues of 
Christian experience lead up to it and lead back to it. Because 
the truth of this doctrine is rooted in experience, its formulation 
was inevitable. No formulation indeed can be adequate. But 
we can at least endeavour to see what sort of difficulties must, from 
the very nature of the case, accompany all thought upon the subject. 


3. Two Primary Difficulties 


There are really two primary difficulties which beset human 
thought upon 4his matter. “One is ‘the difficulty of conceiving 
rightly the unity in the Godhead. ‘The other is the difficulty of 
conceiving rightly the distinction of Persons. It does not matter 
which of these questions we consider first. For each leads 
eventually into the other. Our mental life is of such a kind that 
it is always bringing unity into the manifold of sense impressions 
through the medium of abstract concepts and ideas. Abstraction 
is the unifying principle of all intellectual activity. Consequently, 
the mind inevitably tends to think of unity itself as having the 
characteristics of an abstract principle or idea. It is a fact well- 
known in the history of thought that the philosophic and scientific 
mind finds personality difficult and intractable to system. From 
this point of view, if the idea of God is introduced, it is valued 
chiefly as providing a rational ground for the unity and order of the 
world-process. Medaljsm—is—the interpretation of the Trinity 
which..is-mest_congenial to this type of thought, “The Persons 
become aspects, modes or phases of a single principle rather than 
centres of consciousness-in-relattonship.—... This conception of unity 
is however very inadequate to reality as we know it to-day. The 
unities which the sciences reveal to us consist in the correlation 
of different kinds of energy and in the harmony and balance set 
up by the reciprocal interactions of these energies. As we move 
up the scale of reality the characteristics of unity necessarily change 
as the higher factors of life and mind emerge and take control. 
But the changes which occur move steadily in the direction of 
self-conscious personality and personal relationships. “This series, 


144 The Christian Conception of God 


as we know it, is unfinished. Personality, as known to the 
psychologist, is an imperfectly realised unity, in which conflicting 
tendencies have not yet attained to such a harmony as it is necessary 
to presuppose as the goal of personality. Moreover, this incom- 
pleteness in the unity of the individual is reflected in his corre- 
sponding inadequacy as the unit in a system_of social_relationships. 
Yet this unfinished series is a clue as to the direction in which we 
ought to look for our ideas about unity and personality in God. 

A different line of approach is that of religious experience which 
starts, not from the idea of unity, but from the experience of personal 
relations. For that is in essence what religion means, even in the 
earliest stage of religious history, when the object of worship is 
not clearly recognised in terms of such relationship. “The peculiar 
difficulty with which religion is beset is not abstraction but 
anthropomorphism. Consequently, religious thought, in attri- 
buting personality to God, finds it difficult to strip off from the 
idea of personality the assogiations of human imperfection and 
limitation which cling to it. , Now the essential Christian experi- 
ence of God is, in its completeness, what the New ‘Testament 
records, namely personal communion with Father, Son and Holy 
Spirit, a threefold experience of personal relationship. ‘This 
involves the idea of a fellowship of Persons in God; and this 
fellowship is partially and imperfectly but truly reflected in the 
fellowship of the Christian community. On the whole, therefore, 
it seems true to say that, as reason is primarily interested in the 
unity of God, so religious experience is primarily concerned with 
the distinction of Persons. | Owing to the difficulty referred to 


| 


py atecne to Tri-theism. The human mind tends to think of \ 


the essence of personality as consisting in what sets one individual 
apart from another. “The whole zzsus of human personality 
towards self-realisation seems to confirm this idea ; because in our 
natural experience there is a deep fissure between the individual 
and social aspects of personality which it is hard to bridge over. 
But the Christian reading of this natural experience is that it is in 
large part to be explained in terms of sinful pride and selfishness. 
It points away from the true meaning of personality, not towards it. 
Philosophy also teaches a very different lesson. he higher values 
or goods of life are of such a kind that they can and must be shared 
For they can be fully realised or enjoyed by each only in com-f 


\ 


Creation, Miracle and Providence 14.5 


munity with others. If then we strip off our present limitations 
Preis a ere me ERT PRE would 
mitan something not Tes but more truly/social Khan anything-of 
which we have experience,. It would mean precisely what is 
indicated in the mysterious doctrine that there is a complete mutual 


indwelling and interpenetration of the Three Persons in the 


Godhead. 
BET a 


CREATION, MriracLE AND PROVIDENCE 


In conclusion, something must be said as to the view of God’s 
relation to the world and to human life which follows upon this 
conception of God. For Christians, creation has always meant 
that God made the universe “‘ out of nothing.” No other view Is 
compatible with the absolute and transcendent character of the 
Deity as understood by Christian theism, It follows that God 1s 
the necessary ground of creation. Can we in any sense speak of 
creation being necessary to God? Here there is need of careful 
distinction. Some philosophers seem to think that a perpetual 
process of creation is a necessary counterpart to the idea of a living 
personal God. Whether there is such perpetuity of creation is 
surely an irrelevant question, which we have no means of answer- 
ing. The vital point is that God does not create under any 
necessity external to Himself, but by the perfectly free action of 
benevolent will. Since, however, there is nothing arbitrary in 
the divine will, this is the same thing as to say that He creates 
in accordance with the laws of His own nature. He does not 
create because He stands in need of creatures, but through the 
overflowing fullness of His love which must manifest itself 
in condescension. It is unfortunate that the English language 
possesses no convenient way of distinguishing between these two 
kinds of necessity. But whatever language we use the dis- 
tinction must be maintained. Upon this difficult subject the 
doctrine of the Trinity throws a flood of light. In a Unitarian 
conception of God, where there is no subject-object relation within 
the Godhead, the idea of creation inevitably comes to mean that 
the world is the necessary object of divine activity. The world 
thus takes the place of the eternal Son, and God is subjected to 
external necessity. If, however, there are hypostatic distinctions 
within the Godhead, we can find in God an eternal ground and 

L 


146 The Christian Conception of God 


possibility of creative action without introducing such necessity. 
The creative capacity which we know in human personality attains 
its ends through growth and succession ; and such attainment is 
but a mode of self-realisation within the created order of which 
we are parts. But a transcendent Creator cannot be thought of 
as finding His adequate object in a created order, which is and must 
always remain less than Himself. Such an adequate object the 
Father possesses in the Son, who is the eternal reproduction of 
Himself. “The doctrine of the Trinity indicates in God eternal 
activities of personal relationship such as provide a rational ground 
for creative activity. Eternity is no mere negation of succession. 
For the most significant forms of human experience transcend 
successiveness and yet they are immanent ina succession, Wemay 
therefore believe that in the eternal activities within the Godhead 
there exists in a more eminent way all that is abidingly significant 
in the temporal process.4 

Closely connected with the subject of creation are important 
questions concerning miracles and providence. Upon these 
matters nothing more can be attempted here than the indication 
of a point of view. We have seen that the graded series of reality 
known to us through the sciences is actually an unfinished series.” 
Moreover, as new factors emerge in the series, horizons proper 
to the lower stages are transcended. Again, the whole series 
is transcended by God its Creator. It follows then that God’s 
action upon the world as a whole must transcend our experience 
of what falls within the series. ‘The series itself contains the 
principle of transcendence and points beyond itself to horizons out- 
side our experience of the system which we call Nature. In other 
words, it points to a supernatural order. It is, to say the least, 
hazardous, therefore, from our partial standpoint to prejudge the 
question as to what kinds of special action might or might not be 
appropriate to the fulfilment of God’s redeeming purpose for His 
creatures. “The Christian conception of God and of His relation 
to the world involves at least the possibility of miracles. Miracles. 
may be defined as unusual events in which we catch a glimpse of 
a divine purpose which is actually embodied in all events. Further, 
they are unusual to such a degree that in that respect they fall 
outside the horizon of our normal experience altogether. “Che 


1 This is what I understand Dr. Temple to mean in Christus Veritas, ch. xv. 
2 DEE PP 11305519211. 


Creation, Miracle and Providence 147 


‘6 ? 


* miracle,’ 
6 


term as thus defined, has a more restricted meaning 
than the term “supernatural,” which covers operations of grace 
as well as abnormal events. ‘The distinction seems to be mainly 
relative to our experience (we have continuous experience of grace, 
but not of miracle). If, however, miracles are contra quam est 
nota natura, the same is really true of the whole action of grace 
upon the soul. For the power of grace overcomes the sway of 
natural propensities and enables freewill to assert itself. Thus 
psychological laws are transcended by grace as physical laws are 
transcended by miracle. “Theidea of miracle belongs toa group of 
ideas which includes freewill, providence, prayer and grace. “These 
in turn run back to creative will and a revelation of personality 
in God. Wecannot properly dissociate any of these ideas from one 
another. “There are as substantial arguments available against 
human freewill and against the validity of prayer as against any 
physical miracle. If it is appropriate for human freewill to break 
through psychological laws by the aid of divine grace, then we 
cannot rule out the possibility that it is appropriate for the Creator 
Himself, for sufficient reasons, to supersede the normal sequences 
of the physical universe. “The universe exists, not primarily for 
the purpose of exhibiting unvarying sequences of law but, that it 
may be sacramental of God’s glory and goodness and may be the 
medium through which God fulfils His providential purposes for 
man. ‘The providence of God is directed towards personal ends 
and is concerned with the priceless treasure of human souls, In 
the last resort the universe is best understood as the unfolding 
expression of God’s love. Its deepest secrets are disclosed in such 
sayings of our Lord as “‘ Come unto me and I will give you rest” 
and “*’There is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth ” ; 
or again in the words of St. Paul, ‘‘ All things work together for 
good to them that love God.” 4 


1 In these brief remarks the writer has intentionally confined himself to 
one point only in the modern controversy about miracles, namely its meta- 
physical aspect, this being the only point which seemed relevant to the subject 
ofthisessay. ‘The writer is well aware that other aspects are raised by the bearing 
of modern anthropological and psychological inquiries upon the evidence for 
particular miracles. An admirable discussion of the metaphysical aspect will 
be found in Dr. F. R. Tennant’s recent work, Miracle and its philosophical 
presuppositions. 


148 The Christian Conception of God 


ADDITIONAL NOTE 
By E. J. BICKNELL 


Tue TRINITARIAN DoctTrRINE OF AUGUSTINE AND AQUINAS 


Tue aim of this note is to examine the statement that in Augustine and 
Aquinas the personal distinctions of Father, Son and Holy Spirit are 
reduced to mere functions or activities within one single divine mind or 
consciousness. 

The terms “‘ Una Substantia,” ‘‘ Tres Personae,” are first found in 
Tertullian. While the precise meaning of “ substantia”’ is disputed, there 
is a general agreement that “‘ personae”? is in origin a grammatical term, 
taken from texts used to prove the distinctions of the Persons, as where 
the Father addresses the Son, or the Spirit speaks of the Father and the 
Son, i.e. the Three are regarded as holding intercourse with one another. 
Hence, as in ordinary speech, “ persona’ means a party to a social relation- 
ship. 

Augustine, unlike earlier Latin writers, approaches the Trinity from 
the side of the divine unity. “The Trinity is the one and true God” 
(De Trinitate,i. 4). “’The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit 
intimate a divine unity of one and the same substance in an indivisible 
equality” (i. 7). Whatever is spoken of God according to substance or, 
as he prefers to call it, essence (vii. 10), is spoken of each Person severally 
and together of the ‘Trinity (v. 8). All that God is He is essentially. 
In Him are no accidents. For what is accidental can be lost or changed. 
His substance is at once both simple and manifold (v. 5, vi. 8). Each 
Person is as great as the other two or as the entire Trinity. It is hard to 
say either ‘‘ the Father alone” or “ the Son alone,” since they are in- 
separable and are always in relation to one another (vi. 9). ‘The divine 
substance is in no way a fourth term. We do not say three Persons out 
of the same essence in the same way as three statues out of the same gold, 
for it is one thing to be gold, another to be statues. Nor, are they like 
three men of the same nature, since out of the same nature can also be 
other threemen. “ In that essence of the Trinity in no way can any other 
person exist out of the same essence” (vii. 11). ‘The truth that each is 
equal to the three is difficult because the imagination uses spatial images. 
In all their operations ad extra the Three have one will and activity 
(1.9). ‘Their unity is by nature and not by consent. Hence the Son takes 
an active part in His own sending (11. 9), and the Angel of the Lord in the 
Old ‘Testament is the appearance not of the Son, but of God, that is the 
Trinity (i. end). 

Yet, though inseparable, they are a Trinity. As their names cannot 
be pronounced simultaneously, so in Scripture they are presented to us 
through certain created things in distinction from, and mutual relation 
to, one another, ¢.g. at the Baptism (iv. 30, cp. Ep. 169). The reality of 
essential distinctions within the Trinity is maintained by the theory of 
relations. ‘The Persons cannot be accidents. But “ every thing that is 
said about God is not said according to substance. For it is said in rela- 
tion to something, as the Father in relation to the Son and the Son in 


Additional Note 149 


relation to the Father, which is not accident.” ‘The terms are used 
reciprocally. ‘‘ Though to be the Father and to be the Son is different, 
yet their substance is not different ; because they are so called not accord- 
ing to substance, but according to relation, which relation however is not 
accident, because it is not changeable ” (v. 6). 

» Such teaching is only a development of the doctrine of coinherence 
as found in the Cappadocian Fathers. It is unfortunate that in vil. 7-12, 
through his ignorance of Greek, Augustine’s treatment of their terminology 
is so confused that it is not worth discussion. ‘They indisputably did not 
reduce the Persons to three aspects of a single self. Augustine goes 
further in this direction. ‘The analogies of ix.-xiv. are all taken from the 
activities of a single mind. He begins by asserting that it is through love 
that we can best attain to the knowledge of the Trinity, and finds in the 
threefold nature of love a trace of the Trinity. “‘ Love is of someone 
that loves, and with love something (or in one place someone) is loved. 
Behold then there are three things: he that loves and that which is loved 
and love”’ (viii. 14). Elsewhere he identifies the Spirit with the love 
of the Father for the Son (vii. 3-8), or with the will of God which is a 
will of love. 

On the other hand, he did not wish to be a modalist. "Though he 
disliked the word ‘‘ Personae” as unscriptural, yet he recognized that 
something had to be said to deny the teaching of Sabellius (v. 10, cp. vil. 9). 
In his ‘‘ Retractations ” (I. iv. 3), composed at the end of his life, he 
corrects ‘‘ He who begets and He who is begotten, is one,” by changing 
“is”? into “ are,” in conformity with John x. 30. Further, in a famous 
passage of the De Trinitate he expressly affirms that each Person has a 
knowledge and memory and love of His own. ‘There emerges at length a 
view inconsistent with the idea of God asa single self (xv. 12). It cannot 
be set on one side asa mere slip. It is anticipated in xv. 7, and occurs 
independently in Ep. clxix. 6. It is so elaborately worked out that it 
represents an essential element in his theology. Lastly, though his psycho- 
logical illustrations are borrowed from the functioning of a single self, 
he ends a prolonged apology for their inadequacy. ‘“ But three things 
belonging to one person cannot suit those three persons, as man’s purpose 
demands, and this we have demonstrated in this fifteenth book ” (xv. 45). 

Two other considerations deserve notice. First, he gets more 
modalistic, the further that he gets away from Scripture into the region of 
logic. Secondly, the influence of Neoplatonism has at times led him to 
force the Christian idea of God into moulds of thought borrowed from 
pagan philosophy, so as to endanger its Christianity. 

In Aquinas, the dominant analogy is that of distinct functions within 
asingle human mind. ‘The relation of Father to Son is that of a thinker 
or speaker to his thought. ‘The Spirit is love. ‘The Son proceeds by 
way of intellect as the Word, the Spirit by way of will as love. Is then 
the Son only the divine thought, and the Spirit the love which God has 
for the object of His thought? ‘This simple explanation is hard to 
reconcile with other passages. “‘ Persona” is defined, in the words of 
Boethius, as ‘‘ rationalis naturae individua substantia ” or “ subsistentia ”’ 


150 The Christian Conception of God 


> is not used in the case of God in the 


same sense as in the case of creatures, but “* excellentiori modo.” It 
denotes a relation existing in the divine nature “‘ per modum substantiae 
seu hypostasis,’ not as a mere accident. ‘Cum nomen ‘alius’ 
masculine acceptum non nisi distinctionem in natura significet, Filius 
alius a Patre convenienter dicitur.”” We say “ unicum Filium,” but not 
*‘ unicum Deum,” because deity is common to more than one. A neuter 
signifies a common essence, but a masculine a subject (suppositum). 
“Quia in divinis distinctio est secundum personas non autem secundum 
essentiam, dicimus quod Pater est alius a Filio sed non aliud: ete 
converso quod sunt unum non unus” (Summa Theol. I. xxxi.2). Again, 
‘“Apud nos relatio non est subsistens persona. Non autem est ita in 
divinis. . . . Nam relatio est subsistens persona” (xxxiii. 2). In xxxvii. 
the name love is only applied to the Spirit as “ personaliter acceptus.” In 
his discussion of the Incarnation he decides that though it was fitting that 
the Son should become incarnate, it was equally possible for either of the 
other Persons to have been incarnate (III. ii. 5 and 8). Further words 
predicated of God and creatures, are predicated not univocally, but either 
analogically or equivocally (I. xi. 5). In xxxix. 4, he shows that persona 
is not used equivocally. ‘Therefore it must be used analogically. This 
analogous use implies some likeness between the divine and human persons. 

In short, even in Augustine and Aquinas there is evidence of the 
inadequacy of the single human mind with its functions to furnish a 
complete illustration of the threefold process of the divine life. It 
suggests that it needs to be supplemented by something like the analogy 
from a perfectly unified society. 


or “ hypostasis.”” “* Persona’ 


THE CHRIST OF THE SYNOPTIC 
GOSPELS 
BY SIR EDWYN CLEMENT HOSKYNS, Br. 


CONTENTS 


I. ‘THe ProspremM 
II. Tue Lisperat Protestant SOLUTION 
III. Its Rerrection 1n Catuortic MopeErRnNisM 


IV. NeEep oF A SYNTHETIC SOLUTION 
1. Literary Structure of the Gospels 


2. Canons of Historical Criticism 
3. Fallacies in the Liberal Protestant Reconstruction 


V. Governinc Ipgas oF THE GosPELs 
. The Kingdom of God. : 
2. The Humiliation of the Chit \, 
BULL AGH a Oruces man, 
4. The New Righteousness and Eternal Life 


VI. Conctiusion 


PAGE 


Leg 
Sey 
158 


160 
161 
164 
166 


171 
171 
173 
174 
175 


176 


“ There is an absence of all reason in electing humanity to Divinity.” 
TERTULLIAN, Apology. 


“ Beloved, outward things apparel God, and since God was content to take 
a body, let us not leave Him naked and ragged.”—JOHN DONNE. 


“Doe this, O Lord, for His sake who was not less the King of Heaven for 
Thy suffering Him to be crowned with thornes in this world.”—-JOHN DONNE. 


‘“‘ Wherein lies happiness ? In that which becks 
Our ready minds to fellowship divine, 
A fellowship with essence ; till we shine 
Full alchemiz’d, and free of space. Behold 
The clear religion of heaven.” 
KEATS, Endymion. 


“¢* What think you of Christ,’ friend ? when all’s done and said, 
Like you this Christianity, or not ?” 
RoBERT BROWNING, Bishop Blougram’s Apology. 


I 
THE PROBLEM 


For the Catholic Christian “‘ Quid vobis videtur de Ecclesia, 
What think ye of the Church? ” is not merely as pertinent a 
question as “* Quid vobis videtur de Christo, What think ye of the 
Christ2”?: it is but the same question differently formulated. 
This unity between Christ and the Church, vital though it is for 
Catholic religion, raises a historical problem as delicate as it is 
important : delicate, because of its extreme complexity ; impor- 
tant, because the study of the history and development of primi- 
tive Christianity has a subtle though direct bearing upon Christian 
belief and practice. 

The problem is this : What is the relation between the life 
and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth and the Christ of St. Paul, of 
St. John, and of Catholic piety? And further, what is the rela- 
tion between the little group of disciples called by Jesus from 
among the Galilean fishermen and the Corpus Christi of St. Paul 
or the Civitas Dei of St. Augustine? This problem was first 
clearly recognised, when, in the latter half of the eighteenth 
century, the exegesis of the books of the New ‘Testament was taken 
out of the hands of the dogmatic theologians and entrusted to the 


154 The Christ of the Synoptic Gospels 


historians. Since that time many theories have been advanced in 
order to explain the development of Christianity in the apostolic 
age, and many attempts have been made to analyse and describe 
its essential character. “hese, however, show such radical dis- 
agreement, and are so mutually exclusive, that it can occasion little 
surprise if the intelligent observer grows sceptical of the ability of 
the historian to reach conclusions in any way satisfactory ; “* facts 
being set forth in a different light, every reader believes as he 
pleases ; and indeed the more judicious and suspicious very justly 
esteem the whole as no other than a romance, in which the writer 
hath indulged a happy and subtle invention.” 1 

The chaos is not, however, so great as would at first sight 
appear. ‘There is at the present time a fairly widespread agree- 
ment among a large number of scholars as to the main outline of 
the development within primitive Christianity. The conclusions 
arrived at accord so well with modern demands that they have 
strayed into quite popular literature, and are found to be exercising 
considerable influence outside strictly academic circles. 


Il 
Tue LIBERAL PROTESTANT SOLUTION 


The reconstruction is roughly as follows ? : 
Jesus was a Jewish prophet, inspired by the Spirit of God 
at his baptism by John, and called to reform the religion of 


1 Henry Fielding, Foseph Andrews, Book III, chapter i. 

2 The more popular exposition of this view may be found in the following 
books: E. F. Scott, Te New Testament To-day; J. Estlin Carpenter, The 
First Three Gospels; W. Wrede, Paul, English translation by E. Lummis, 
preface by J. Estlin Carpenter; C. Piepenbring, La Christologie Biblique ; 
B. W. Bacon, The Beginnings of the Gospel Story, esp. pp. 38-40 ; A. Harnack, 
What is Christianity? ; T. R. Glover, The Fesus of History, Fesus in the 
Experience of Men, esp. chap. ix; G. Frenssen, Dorfpredigten. 


Such expositions are largely based upon elaborate literary and historical. 


critical studies, and upon the more important critical commentaries on the 
books of the New Testament. The following have been of especial importance : 
H. J. Holtzmann, Hand-commentar zum Neuen Testament, Lehrbuch der 
Neu-Testamentlichen Theologie; A. Harnack, Beitrdége zur Einleitung in das 
Neue Testament, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte; E. Klostermann, Com- 
mentary on the Synoptic Gospels in the Handbuch zum Neuen Testament, 
edited by H. Lietzmann ; J. Wellhausen, Das Evangelium Marci, Das Evan- 
gelium Lucae, Das Evangelium Matthaet; R. Jilicher, Die Gleichnisreden 
Fesu; A. Loisy, Les Ewangiles Synoptiques; W. Bousset, Kyrios Christos ; 
R. Reitzenstein, Die Hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen ; Claude Montefiore, 
The Synoptic Gospels; F. J. Foakes-Jackson and Kirsopp Lake, The Beginnings 
of Christianity, (esp. 1. pp. 265-418). 


The Liberal Protestant Solution 15s 


the Jews, which in the hands of the scribes and Pharisees had 
been overlaid with burdens which the common people were 
unable to bear, and in the hands of the Sadducees had been 
bereft of all spiritual content. After the death of John, he 
continued the Baptist’s work, discarding, however, his crude 
and inhuman asceticism. Jesus came to interpret the Mosaic 
Law and to awaken in men the love of God and the love of 
one another. A true Jew, he felt himself one of the great 
line of prophets and proclaimed that union with God and the 
brotherhood of men depend upon righteousness and purity of 
heart. In the Sermon on the Mount, with unerring insight, 
he emphasised the essential characteristics of that righteousness 
which is pleasing to God, and his teaching was embodied in 
his life. The authority of his teaching and the power of his 
life rested upon his own intense faith that God was his Father ; 
a belief which, owing to his regular practice of silent and lonely 
prayer, led to an actual experience of union with God. In 
the parables his simple teaching was presented to the crowds 
in language which they could understand, and his miracles of 
healing were the natural expression of the power of the spiritual 
over the material. It is true that at times he chose the 
exaggerated and poetic language of Jewish eschatology as a 
vehicle for his teaching, but such language was natural at 
the period in which he lived, and causes little surprise. His 
essential Gospel is not to be found in the eschatological 
speeches, but in the Sermon on the Mount, and in the parables 
of the Sower, the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan.* 
Whether or no he claimed to be the Messiah, and in what 
sense he used the title, if he did use it of himself, we cannot 
now know. Nor can the modern historian recapture the 
exact significance of the phrase the ‘Son of man’; perhaps 
it was but the expression of his consciousness of the dignity 
of his essential humanity. These are problems which need 
further consideration, and which may perhaps be insoluble. 


1 Recently, however, since the publication of Johannes Weiss’ monograph, 
Die Predigt Fesu vom Reiche Gottes, and of the works of Albert Schweitzer, 
Shizze des Leben Fesu, Das Abendmahls Problem, and von Reimarus Xu 
Wrede, most New Testament scholars have been compelled to treat the eschato- 
logical element in the teaching of Jesus far more seriously. “The consequent 
readjustment in the reconstruction of the development of primitive Christianity 
is best studied in Kirsopp Lake’s Landmarks of Early Christianity. 


156 The Christ of the Synoptic Gospels 


But one negative conclusion may be regarded as certain. He 
did not claim to possess a divine nature. ‘The possibility, 
however, must always be allowed that his sense of union with 
his Father in heaven may have led him at times to claim to be 
the Messiah and even the Son of God ; if so, these titles were 
the expression of his sense of divine vocation and of the com- 
plete surrender of his human will to that of his Father. 

The crucifixion was the greatest of all human tragedies. 
True to their traditions the Jews killed the greatest of their 
prophets. But history has reversed the judgment of Caiaphas. 
He is only remembered as the man who chose to hand over 
Jesus to Pilate as a leader of insurrection against the emperor, 
rather than to accept- his teaching and himself undertake the 
reform of the Jewish religion. 

The divinely inspired ethical humanitarianism of Jesus, 
originally evolved within the narrow sphere of an attempt to 
reform Judaism, could not be thus permanently confined. 
At times Jesus seemed to feel that his religion was capable of 
infinite expansion, for 1f every human soul were of infinite 
worth in the eyes of the Father of all, there could be no peculiar 
people and Jewish particularism was therefore undermined at 
its foundations. But he foresaw no formal mission; he 
founded no Church to propagate his ideals ; he left them to 
grow and expand in the hearts of those who had heard him, 
conversed with him, and lived under the influence of his 
personality. 

‘The influence of Jesus over his disciples was immensely 
increased by their belief that he was still alive after the cruci- 
fixion. “The importance of the resurrection experiences for 
the later development of primitive Christian faith cannot be 
exaggerated. “Lhe disciples were convinced that Jesus was 
the Messiah, and that he would shortly return in glory to 
destroy the power of evil and inaugurate the final rule of God. 
By a process of enthusiastic reflection upon the death and 
resurrection of Jesus, and upon vague memories of certain 
obscure sayings of his, they advanced the first step toward 
Catholicism. Whereas Jesus had preached a Gospel, his 
disciples preached him. And yet they still remained Jews, 
loyal to the traditions of their fathers, and distinguished from 
other Jews only by their claim to know the Messiah, and 


The Liberal Protestant Solution LSy. 


by the intensity of their expectation of his coming. ‘They 
waited for Jesus, the Christ. 

This Messianic enthusiasm spread, as such beliefs are 
known to spread in the East ; but its progress can with difh- 
culty be traced, for it moved underground, just as the piety 
of the Balymous (Plymouth) brothers spread up the Nile 
valley during the nineteenth century. Groups of disciples 
appeared at Damascus and at Antioch and even some Greeks 
were converted to the new faith. With the mission of St. 
Paul the number of believers grew, and, since his converts 
were drawn chiefly from the Greeks and not from the Jews, 
popular Greek ideas penetrated Christianity, and his epistles 
were largely influenced by this new element. Paulinism both 
in form and content is popular Greek paganism Christianised. 
Jesus Christ became the Lord and Saviour, the centre of a 
sacramental cult based upon the interpretation of His death as 
a sacrifice, and Christian phraseology was so turned as to 
suggest that the Oriental-Greek cult deities had been super- 
seded by Jesus, the Son of God. What was historically the 
gradual apotheosis of a Jewish prophet under the influence of 
Greek-Christian belief and worship was then thrown back | 
upon the Jesus of history and the story of his life and death 
was related as the Epiphany of the divine Son of God. ‘This 
stage of Christian development was completed when the 
author of the Fourth Gospel completely re-wrote the narrative 
of the life of Jesus, and borrowed the language of Greek 
philosophy in order to interpret his significance for the world. 
He was the Logos incarnate. 

Thus Christianity became a mystery religion which 
tended increasingly to express its doctrines in terms of Greek 
philosophy. In other words, by the beginning of the second 
century the main features of Catholic Christianity had been 
evolved. In one respect, however, Christianity was in- 
finitely superior to all other mystery religions. Christian 
immortality was morally conditioned to an extent which Is not 
found elsewhere. Initiation involved moral conversion, and 
the Eucharist involved a moral conformity to the footprints 
of the Son of God, the vestigia Christi. In this way the 
teaching of the Jesus of history was preserved within the 
growing Catholic Church ; it was not altogether submerged 


158 The Christ of the Synoptic Gospels 


under the mythical interpretation of his person. ‘This moral 
sincerity ultimately saved Christianity from the fate of other 
mystery religions. “They perished, but it endured. ‘The 
gradual disappearance of the Jesus of history, however, con- 
stituted a grave danger to the persistence within Catholicism 
even of this moral earnestness. 

The rediscovery of the Jesus of history in our own days 
by the application of the historical method to the study of the 
earliest Christian documents, and the consequent reconstruc- 
tion of the development which issued in the Catholic Church 
of the second century, is far more than a monument to the skill 
and honesty of the historian. A basis is now provided for a 
new reformation of the Christian religion, capable of ensuring 
its survival in the modern world. In the Gospel of Jesus is 
to be found the pure religion of civilised and united humanity. 
Thus the assured results of liberal historical criticism form as 
necessary a prelude to the Christianity of the future as the 
preaching of John the Baptist did to the original proclamation 
of the Gospel. 


{PT 
Irs REFLECTION IN CATHOLIC MOopERNISM 


This reconstruction of the origin and development of primitive 
Christianity is undeniably attractive, not so much on account of 
the sanction which it gives to modern idealistic humanitarianism, 
but because for the first time Christian historians have presented 
a rational account of the relation between the Gospel of Jesus and 
the Catholic Religion, on the basis of a critical analysis of the 
documents contained in the New Testament. “The method is 
historical and the conclusions are supported by evidence drawn 
from the documents themselves. “hese conclusions have not left 
even Catholic scholars unmoved, and Catholic Modernism is, in 
one of its aspects, an attempt to explain and defend Catholicism on 
the basis of this historical reconstruction, It is maintained that 
Catholicism is the result of a development in which the Gospel of 
Jesus formed but one element, “The dogmas of the Church and its 
sacrificial sacramentalism are pagan in origin, and for this reason can 
be shown to correspond to demands essentially human. Catholicism 
is a synthesis between the Gospel of Jesus and popular pagan 
religion ; and, because it is a synthesis, Catholicism can claim to 





Its Reflection in Catholic Modernism 159 


be the universal religion! Thus, while Liberal Protestantism 
tends to find the religion of the future safeguarded by the discovery 
of the Jesus of history, and by the consequent liberation from the 
accretions of Catholicism, so foreign to the modern mind,? Catholic 
Modernism welcomes the broadening of the basis of Christianity, 
due to the recognition of its having preserved and purified the 
mythology and worship of countless ages of men, and feels no 
regret that a way of escape from the tyranny of a Jewish prophet 
has been so solidly secured by the historical and critical approach 
to the study of the New Testament. 

The conclusions, which give this newly discovered liberty the 
sanction of unprejudiced and scientific historical research, have, 
however, been shown to be open to very severe criticism, which is 
by no means confined to those who may be suspected of a desire to 
defend orthodoxy. ‘These critics do not only question the details 
of the reconstruction ; they judge the whole to have sprung less from 
a nice historical sense, than from an impatient anxiety to interpret 
primitive Christianity ‘‘in terms of modern thought.” ® 

Those who regard the writing of history as a gentlemanly 
accomplishment which requires little more than sufficient leisure 
to ascertain the relevant facts, and a certain facility for embodying 
them in adequate literary form, not unnaturally discover in the 


1 Loisy ably defended Catholicism along these lines in his L’Ewangile et 
Lig és iglise (esp. chap. iv). The book was a criticism of Harnack’s What 1s 
Christianity ? and of A. Sabatier’s Esquisse d’une Philosophie de la Religion. 
Loisy’s point of view was developed byG. Tyrrell inThrough Scylla and Charybats 
and in Christianity at the Cross-Roads ; it appears in more modern form in 
Friedrich Heiler’s recent book, Der Katholizismus (esp. pp. 17-78, 595-660). 

2 “ Above all, the figure of Jesus stands out all the more grandly as the mists 
of theological speculation are blown away from him, and we come to discern 
him as he really sojourned on earth. It isnot too much to say that by recovering 
for us the historical life of Jesus criticism has brought Christianity back to the 
true source of its power. The creeds, whatever may have been their value 
formerly, have broken down, but Jesus as we know him in his life, and all the 
more as his life is freed from accretions of legend, still commands the world’s 
reverence and devotion. The theology of the future, it is not rash to prophesy, 
will start from the interpretation of Jesus as a man in history.” —E. F. Scott, 
The New Testament To-day, pp. 89 ff. 

8 G. A.van der Bergh van Eysinga, Radical Views about the New Testament ; 
Arthur Drews, The Christ Myth; P. L. Couchoud, The Enigma of Jesus, 
preface by Sir J. G. Frazer ; V.H. Stanton, The Gospels as Historical Documents ; 
Pierre Batiffol, The Credibility of the Gospels. To these must be added the learned 
and voluminous writings of Theodor Zahn. ‘These authors agree in recognis- 
ing that the Gospels stand within the sphere of Christian orthodoxy ; ‘they 
disagree, however, completely as to their historical value. 


160 The Christ of the Synoptic Gospels 


disagreements of the critics nothing more than a fresh instance of 
that persistent and irrational hatred which theologians are commonly 
supposed to feel for one another. “Those who assume that the 
Gospel of Jesus was a simple gospel are equally irritated by the 
inability of the critics to reach agreed conclusions, and attribute 
this disagreement to the innate tendency of the academic mind 
first to complicate what is obvious, and then to perform mental 
gymnastics as prodigious as they are unnecessary. Books written 
under the influence of such prejudices are, however, calculated 
rather to inflame the imagination than to sharpen the intellect, and 
fail to lead to an accurate appreciation of the canons of historical 
criticism or of the peculiar problems which confront the historian 
of the beginnings of Chuistianity. 

English theologians, trained in the study of the Classics, and 
accustomed to an exacting standard of scholarly accuracy, have 
looked with suspicion on such popular accounts of Christian origins, 
and have shown far less confidence in the “assured results of 
modern criticism ”’ than their colleagues in Germany, Holland, 
and France. ‘The effect of this tradition of learned conservatism 
has been that, whilst English theologians have made important 
contributions to the study of the history of the text of the New 
‘Testament, to the literary analysis of the first three Gospels, 
technically known as the Synoptic Problem, and to the exegesis of 
the -various books of the New ‘Testament, they have generally 
refrained from attempting any comprehensive reconstruction of the 
development of primitive Christianity on the basis of these exhaus- 
tive preliminary studies, and have been content mainly with a 
criticism of the critics. 


IV 
NEED OF A SYNTHETIC SOLUTION 


It can hardly be denied that English theology stands at the 
cross-roads. “The preliminary studies with which it has been 
chiefly concerned are now on the whole so well-worn that the 
results have passed into the textbooks ; and the attempt to force 
the energy of all the younger men into these channels threatens to 
involve them in work which must be largely unproductive. On 

1 Eldred C. Vanderlaan, Protestant Modernism in Holland, provides a 


useful survey of recent Dutch literature; cf. K. H. Roessingh, De moderne 
Theologie in Nederland, and Het Modernisme in Nederland. 


Need of a Synthetic Solution 161 


the other hand, the analysis of the religious experience within 
primitive Christianity, and of the beliefs by which it was stimulated, 
offers a new line of approach to the history of Christian origins, 
and provides a field of investigation almost untouched, except by 
those who have little or no first-hand knowledge of the necessary 
prolegomena. If this be a correct statement of the present 
situation, there can be little doubt that the time has come for 
English theology to make its contribution to the study of Christian 
beginnings, a contribution which may be all the more valuable for 
this long preparatory discipline. An examination of the recon- 
struction outlined above provides a convenient point of departure. 
Should it survive the examination, it only remains to perfect the 
whole by a greater attention to detail; if it be found unsatis- 
factory, an alternative reconstruction must be attempted and 
submitted to the judgment of scholars. “The main purpose of this 
essay 1s to state the problem afresh, and to indicate the lines along 
which a solution may perhaps be found. 


1. Literary Structure of the Gospels 


The literary analysis of the four Gospels has shown that the 
first three Gospels are closely related documents. Both St. Luke 
and the editor of St. Matthew’s Gospel made use of St. Mark’s 
Gospel in approximately its present form, and also of an early 
Christian collection of the sayings of Jesus. Since both writers, 
apparently independently, made constant use of the same documents, 
it may not unreasonably be deduced that they regarded them as of 
especial importance. In addition to the material common to the 
First and Third Gospels each editor has incorporated into his 
narrative special material not found elsewhere. ‘Therefore, if 
St. Mark’s Gospel be called AZ, St. Matthew’s Gospel T, 
St. Luke’s Gospel Z, the collection of sayings Q, the special 
material in St. Matthew’s Gospel S1, and the special material in 
St. Luke’s Gospel $2, T is composed from 47+ Q-+ S1 and L 
from 474+ Q-+ S2. But it must not be assumed that the editors 
incorporated their sources unchanged. “They show considerable 
freedom in the use of their sources, a freedom which 1s however 
considerably curtailed when they record actual sayings of Jesus. 
The literary construction of the First and Third Gospels may 
therefore be expressed by the formulae T (47+ Q-+ S81) and 


M 


162 The Christ of the Synoptic Gospels 
L(m+Q-+ 82). The first three Gospels depend ultimately 


upon tradition, which was preserved not in the interest of 
accurate history, but for the guidance and encouragement of the 
Christians. It is therefore always possible that the tradition may 
have been transformed before it was committed to writing. It 
must be borne in mind, however, that the belief that the same 
Jesus who had been taken from them into heaven would return 
in like manner may well have been more powerful in preserving 
an accurate tradition of His words than any theory of unprejudiced 
historical investigation. 

The Fourth Gospel occupies a peculiar position in the New 
Testament. In form it Is a narrative of the actions and sayings of 
Jesus; that is,it is a Gospel. In substance it is primarily an inter- 
pretation of Christianity in the light of Christian experience. 
The author has no doubt made use of oral tradition, or of a part 
or the whole of the Synoptic Gospels, or of apostolic reminiscences, 
or of all of these, but they have been transformed in such a way 
that it is almost impossible to disengage the tradition from the 
interpretation. ‘[herefore, whereas the historian is free to make 
full use of the Fourth Gospel in describing the Christian religion at 
the close of the first century, it is dangerous for him to use it as an 
authority for the earliest form of the Christian tradition. 

Since none of the Gospels can have been written down in their 
present form before the second half of the first century, the Pauline 
Epistles are the earliest written Christian documents which 
survive. “The Epistles, therefore, offer important evidence of 
the primitive Christian tradition in those passages where St. Paul 
refers to the teaching he had “ received,” and where, when 
writing to those who had not been converted through his preaching, 
he assumes certain beliefs to be held by all Christians alike. 

If this literary analysis be accepted as sound, it follows that 
though the documents do not provide sufficient material for a 
detailed “ life of Jesus,” they ought not to be dismissed as entirely 
untrustworthy. ‘[here is no reason to assume that the character- 
istic features of His teaching could not have been accurately 
preserved, or even that incidents recorded as giving rise to sayings 
of especial importance were entirely due to the creative imagination 
of the Christians. “Ihis, however, needs careful testing. 

The investigation of the origins of Christianity must begin 
with the exegesis of St. Mark’s Gospel (JZ) and of the sayings 


Need of a Synthetic Solution 163 


common to Matthew and Luke (Q), and then proceed to an 
examination of the Matthean-Lucan corrections of JZ and of the 
variant forms in which the Q source has been preserved. “The 
treatment of the special material (S1, $2) is best reserved until. 
this has been completed, since the valuable check afforded by a 
comparison of Matthew and Luke is no longer available. 

Assuming the exegesis of 4Z, OQ, S1, $2 and of the Matthean- 
Lucan corrections of AZ and Q to have been completed, two 
important questions arise. Do these surviving extracts from 
primitive Christian tradition agree or disagree in their description 
of the Gospel proclaimed by Jesus ? and Do they agree or disagree 
with the tradition received by St. Paul ? 

‘The Synoptic Tradition consists of sayings, miracles, parables, 
and a careful record of the events which immediately preceded the 
crucifixion. A Gospelasa literary form emerges when, not merely 
the events immediately preceding the crucifixion, but the whole 
tradition is arranged and narrated as the Way of the Cross crowned 
by the resurrection. ‘This arrangement gives unity to the whole, 
and the reader ts hardly conscious of the fragmentary nature of the 
parts. Whence came this order? Was it a literary device of 
the Evangelists? Was it the result of the faith of the Christians?! 
or did it go back to the Lord Himself? No reconstruction of 
the Gospel of Jesus is possible unless it is possible to answer these 
questions. 

The unity which ts achieved by ordering the material so as to 
secure movement towards a fixed point is also achieved by the 
central position given to the Kingdom of God, or of Heaven, as 
a concrete reality ; the whole tradition, including the narrative 
of the crucifixion, being brought into the closest relationship with 
it. “The recognition of this unity of direction and standpoint 
leads, however, to a simplification more apparent than real. “The 
Kingdom eludes definition. It is both present and future. “The 
full significance of the phrase “‘ the Kingdom of God” is presumed to 
be intelligible only to those who believe in Jesus as the Christ, and 
yet when Peter declares his belief, the obscure title Son of Man is 

1 The literary structure of the Gospels has been minutely examined by 
three German scholars since the war. The conclusion arrived at is that the 
Gospel framework is a literary creation, which emerged from the Hellenistic 
Christian community ; cf. K. L. Schmidt, Der Rahmen der Geschichte Fesu, 


19193 M. Dibelius, Formgeschichte des Evangeliums, 1919; R. Bultmann, Die 
Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition, 1921. 


164 The Christ of the Synoptic Gospels 


substituted for that of the Christ (Mark iv. 11, vill. 29-32). 
Thus the Christology underlies the idea of the Kingdom, and the 
title Son of Man underlies the Christology, and the eschatology 
underlies the whole. “The problem which has to be solved can be 
clearly formulated. Is this complexity due to the existence 
within the Synoptic Tradition of various strata of Christian piety 
with which the original tradition has been successively overlaid, or 
is the origin of this obscurity to be sought in the life and teaching 
of Jesus? If it be maintained that the latter is demanded by the 
evidence of the documents, then a synthesis of the apparently 
divergent elements in His teaching must be found. 


2. Canons of Historical Criticism 


No solution of these intricate problems is possible without 
strict adherence to carefully defined canons of historical criticism. 
Some of these need stating by way of illustration. (1) Passages 
which do not occur in the earliest documentary sources, but which 
are found in later sources, should not be dismissed as necessarily 
originating at the date of the document in which they are found. 
Therefore S1 and S2 may be as valuable as 4Zand Q. ‘They may 
be even more primitive. (2) Editorial corrections of an older 
document need not necessarily be bad corrections. Ifa document 
be open to misinterpretation, an editorial correction, however 
clumsy, may nevertheless correctly elucidate its meaning. “There- 
fore the Matthean-Lucan alterations of JZ and Q require careful 
and sympathetic attention. For example, “ Blessed are the poor 
in spirit”’ (Matt. v. 3) may well be an admirable gloss on the saying 
recorded by St. Luke, “ Blessed are ye poor” (Luke vi. 20). 
(3) If a word occurs only in a comparatively late document, it 
does not follow that what is expressed by the word is secondary. 
Therefore, for example, from the fact that the word “‘ Church” is 
not found in the Synoptic Gospels exceptin S1, and then only twice 
(Matt. xvi. 18, xvill. 17), it cannot be assumed that the existence 
of a corporate body of believers, into which men and women could 
enter and from which they could be excluded, did not form an 
integral part of primitive Christian tradition.t (4) Ifthe analysis of 
a document disentangles distinct strata of subject-matter, it must not 


1 Commenting on Matt. xvi. 18, Montefiore writes : “‘ This passage could 
only have been written after the death of Jesus, for the Christian community 
was hardly founded by Jesus, but only after his death on the basis of his supposed 


Need of a Synthetic Solution 165 


be presumed that the dates of their origin can be arranged in definite 
chronological order.) Therefore, if the analysis of the Gospels 
reveals Jesus as a prophet, as the Messiah, and as the Saviour of the 
world, and His teaching as consisting of moral exhortations, of 
eschatological predictions, and of the promise of supernatural re- 
generation and immortality, it does not follow that this represents 
merely successive stages in the development of Christian faith and 
experience. And as a rider to this it also follows that, in dealing 
with religious texts which chiefly record supernatural events, and 
yet contain much that is normal and human, it must not be assumed 
that what can easily be paralleled from human experience Is 
historical, and that what is supernatural has been superimposed by 
the irrational credulity of later enthusiastic believers. It must, 
nevertheless, be allowed that an experience felt to be supernatural 
tends to be expressed symbolically, and the symbolical language or 
actions are capable of misinterpretation as literal fact, without, 
however, the symbolism being thereby necessarily obscured. 
Alterations in religious texts, which appear at first sight to be 
caused merely by a “‘love of heightening the miraculous,” are 
more often due to an instinctive desire to perfect the symbolism in 
such a way that the reality may thereby be given more vivid and 
adequate expression. Therefore, for example, when it Is found 
that $2 contains a parable, the subject of which is the destruction 
resurrection.” With this may be compared the interpretation of Matt. xvill. 
1g—-18 given by Estlin Carpenter: “ The church whose authority may be 
invoked is very different from the Master’s “Kingdom of God’; and the 
rejection of the evil doer on to the level of the heathen or the publican hardly 
savours of the tireless love which came to seek and to save the lost. Here, 
likewise, may we not say, the practice of the later community seeks shelter 
under the Founder’s sanction” (The First Three Gospels, chap. i. 4). Compare the 
conclusion most solemnly stated by H. Holtzmann : ‘‘ Therefore it is generally 
recognised that Mt. (in xviii. 17) has substituted the Church for the Kingdom 
of God just as he hasrdone in xvi. 18, 19. To-day, the impossibility of finding 
in Jesus a founder of a church is accepted by all theologians who can be taken 
seriously ” (N. T. Theologie, 2nd Ed., vol. ii, p. 268, n. 3). 

1 Upon this assumption Bousset built the theory which he elaborately 
developed in Kyrios Christos: ‘‘ There will emerge from the presentation 
(ie. of the history of the Christology) a clear distinction between the original 
community in Palestine and in Jerusalem, and between Jerusalem and Antioch. 
At the same time it will, I hope, become clear how far Paul belongs pre-eminently 
to the Hellenistic primitive communities, thus making a contribution to the 
solution of the great problem of the relation between Paul and Jesus. The 
first two chapters of my book, which treat of the primitive community in 


Jerusalem, form also no more than the introduction, the starting-point, for the 
presentation which follows” (Kyrios Christos, p. Vi). 


166 The Christ of the Synoptic Gospels 


of a fig-tree (Luke xiii. 6-9), and that JZ includes an incident in 
which a fig-tree is cursed and destroyed (Mark xi. 12-21) it is 
possible that the latter is a later form of the former. But in both 
cases the fig-tree symbolises Judaism, which failed to produce the 
fruit (righteousness) demanded by the Messiah, and the trans- 
formation of the parable into a miracle emphasises rather than 
obscures the symbolism. Considerable portions of the Synoptic 
Tradition may perhaps have been influenced by similar trans- 
formations. 

Finally, (5) In cases where a word or a phrase in an ancient 
document can be translated or paraphrased by a word or phrase in 
common use at a later period, it does not follow that the meaning of 
the original is best reproduced by such a translation or paraphrase : 
it may be even completely obscured. For instance, “ “Thou art my 
beloved Son ”’ seems an obvious rendering of the original Greek in 
the narrative of the Baptism (Mark 1. 11, Lukeii. 22), but the sug- 
gestion of uniqueness, which belongs to the Greek word ayanytég} 
is in no way reproduced by the English word “ beloved.” Hence 
the use of such phrases as “ the call of Jesus,” or “the supreme 
intuition of his divine mission,” ? tends to obscure the meaning of 
the passage, by employing easily understood language to paraphrase 
language which is strange and allusive. 


3. Fallacies in the Liberal Protestant Reconstruction 


‘Tested by such canons as these, the popular reconstruction of 
the various stages in the development of primitive Christianity is 
found to rest upon a series of brilliant and attractive intuitive judg- 
ments rather than upon a critical and historical examination of 
the data supplied by the documents. S1 and S2 are used just in 
so far as they are convenient. ‘The parable of the Prodigal Son . 
(Luke xv. 11-32, $2) is held to be original because forgiveness 
of sin 1s not complicated by any reference to the atoning death of 
the Christ, whilst the speech at Nazareth (Luke iv. 16-30, 82), 
which concludes with the prophecy of the rejection of Jesus by the 
Jews and of His acceptance by the Gentiles, is treated as a Lucan 


1 Cf. The Fournal of Theological Studies, July 1919, pp. 339 ff., Jan. 1926, 
pp. 113 ff., and the detached note on “* The Beloved ”’ as a Messianic title in 
Armitage Robinson, St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, pp. 229 f. 

2 Loisy, Ewvangiles Synoptiques, i. 408, quoted by Montefiore, The Synoptic 
Gospels, 1. 47. 


Need of a Synthetic Solution 167 


composition !; and the important sayings, “ But I havea baptism to 
be baptised with ; and howam Istraitened till it be accomplished !”’ 
(Luke xii. 50, $2), and “Fear not, little flock; for it is your 
Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom ” (Luke Siu 2sny oy 
are hardly mentioned. The subject-matter of the Sermon on the 
Mount is accepted as authentic throughout (Matt. v.—vil., Q + ST), 
but no reference is made to the parable of the Drag-net (Matt. xiii. 
47-50, SI), or to the saying addressed to St. Peter, embedded in 
the episode of the Stater in the Fish’s Mouth, “’Yherefore the 
sons are free” (Matt. xvil. 26, ST). 

St. Mark’s Gospel is regarded as a primary source, but the 
narratives of the Stilling of the Storm, the Walking on the Sea, and 
the Transfiguration are dismissed as altogether untrustworthy, 
even though they record the awe experienced by the disciples in 
the presence of Jesus and their halting, stammering questions, 
“They feared exceedingly, and said one to another, Who then is 
this?’ (Mark iv. 41), ‘* They were sore amazed in themselves ”’ 
(Mark vi. 51), ‘They became sore afraid . . . questioning 
among themselves what the rising again from the dead should 
mean” (Mark ix. 6, 10). Nor is any serious attempt made to 
explain the significant fact that this attitude is accepted and even 
encouraged by Jesus, which suggests that He regarded a true 
interpretation of His Person as only possible on the basis of some 
such experience. Sayings firmly rooted in the tradition, such as 


1 Montefiore comments on Luke iv. 14-30: ‘“‘ Luke now makes a great 
change from the order of Mark. B. Weiss supposes that in doing this he 
followed his extra special authority (L); it is more probable that the transporta- 
tion of the rejection in Nazareth to this place, and the variants in, and additions 
to, the story are entirely the work of the Evangelist. His aim is to symbolise 
the rejection of the Gospel and the Christ by the Jews, and their acceptance by 
the Gentiles. The miracles which Jesus is said to work outside Nazareth 
represent the diffusion of the Gospel beyond Israel. The widow of Sarepta 
and Naaman are types of Christians who were once heathen” (Syn. Gosp., 
ii. 872). Commenting, however, on Luke xv. 11-32, he describes the parable of 
the Prodigal Son as “the purest Judaism,” and quotes with approval the 
remarks of J. Weiss: “‘ The gospel of the grace of God is announced without 
any reference to the cross or the redemptive work of Christ. There is no hint 
that the love of God must first be set free, so to speak, or that a redeemer 
is needed. Jesus trusts in His heavenly Father that without more ado He will 
give His love to every sinner who comes to God in penitence and humble 
confidence. Thus our parable is in fact a ¢ gospel’ in miniature, but not a gospel 
of Christ or of the cross, but the glad tidings of the love of the heavenly 
Father for His children” (Syn. Gosp. ii. 9913 cf. Jiilicher, Die Gleichnisreden 


Fest, i. 365). 


168 The Christ of the Synoptic Gospels 


‘*’The Son of man is delivered up into the hands of men, and they 
shall kill him ; and when he is killed, after three days he shall rise 
again”? (Mark ix. 31), or “The Son of man came not to be 
ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for 
many ”” (Mark x. 45), are held to be secondary and to owe their 
present form either to the influence of Paulinism or to the first 
efforts of the Christians to create formulas which were developed 
later into creeds entirely foreign to the teaching of Jesus. 

The use in the New Testament of language which can be 
paralleled from the surviving records of popular Greek and Eastern 
religious cults is presumed to imply an assimilation of primitive 
Christian piety to Greek-Oriental models. The possibility that 
such language may have. expressed and effectually reproduced a 
relationship to Jesus which existed from the beginning, and which 
it had been the main purpose of His life and death to evoke, is 
hardly ever seriously discussed. 

The assumption that the original preaching of the Gospel was 
simple and at once intelligible to ordinary people, and was only 
misunderstood by the Jewish authorities, whose sympathy had been 
perverted by hard and unbending ecclesiasticism, underlies the 
reconstruction outlined above, and conditions the manipulation of 
the analysis of the subject-matter of the Synoptic Gospels. What 
is supernatural is transferred to the period of growth, what is 
human and merely moral and philanthropic and anti-ecclesiastical 
is assumed to be primitive and original. “The miracles and the 
Christological passages are, therefore, treated primarily as pre- 
senting literary and historical rather than religious problems 
Consequently their value as evidence for the existence of a unique 
experience dependent upon a unique faith is entirely overlooked. 
The possibility has, however, to be reckoned with that the ex- 
perience of salvation through Christ, or as St. Paul calls it, Justi-. 
fication by Faith, rather than an ethical humanitarianism was from 
the beginning the essence of the Christian religion, and that the 
conviction of salvation was from the beginning the peculiar posses- 
sion of the body of the disciples who surrounded Jesus, and that 
the peculiarly Christian love of God and of men followed, but did 
not precede, the experience of salvation by faith in Christ, and the 
incorporation into the body of His disciples. In other words, 
not only may the supernatural element have been primitive and 
original, but also that exclusiveness, which is so obviously a char- 


Need of a Synthetic Solution 169 


acteristic of Catholic Christianity, may have its origin in the 
teaching of Jesus rather than in the theology of St. Paul. 

These criticisms are not, however, wholly to the point unless 
the exegesis of the Marcan narrative of the Baptism, upon which 
the whole reconstruction ultimately rests, can be shown to be 
unsatisfactory and misleading. It isclaimed that the natural mean- 
ing of the narrative is that Jesus, conscious of the need of repent- 
ance, and therefore possessing a sense of sin, came to be baptised 
by John. At the moment of His baptism He passed through a 
religious experience, of which He alone was conscious, and that 
He then felt Himself called to associate Himself with the work of 
the Baptist. “Thus, in spite of all the later Christological accre- 
tions, there is preserved in St. Mark’s Gospel a genuine reminiscence 
of the consecration of Jesus to the work of a prophet, in the light 
of which the claim to the Messiahship, if He did make the claim, 
must be interpreted. “The Matthean version of the Baptism shows 
the early church in the process of obliterating all traces of this 
human experience by the insertion of the preliminary conversation 
between Jesus and John, and by the substitution of “ This is my 
beloved Son” for “‘’Thou art my beloved Son,” which has the 
effect of transforming an intimate personal experience into a public 
proclamation of Jesus as the Messiah (Mt. 1. 13-17, AZ + S1). 

But is the Marcan narrative really capable of such psychologi- 
cal treatment? And is it necessary to convict Matthew of such 
wilful and unprincipled editing? “The Second Gospel opens with 
the description of John the Baptist as the forerunner of the Christ, 
preparing “‘ the way of the Lord,” and proclaiming the advent of 
the Messiah to baptise with the Holy Spirit. Jesus is then im- 
mediately introduced, coming unknown and unrecognised among 
the crowd, and His baptism is narrated as the fulfilment of the 
great Messianic passages in Isaiah xi. 1-9, xlii. 1-4, Ixi. 1-3, and 
in Psalm ii. 7. Most significantly the latter half of the citation 
from the Psalm (ii. 7), “‘ This day have I begotten thee,” is 
omitted, and an echo of Isaiah xlii. 1, ‘““ In whom I am well 
pleased,” substituted for it. No less significant is the inser- 

1 The citation from Ps. ii. 7 is completed in some manuscripts of the Lucan 
version of the Baptism (Da bc ff?). Canon Streeter considers this to be the 
original reading of Luke iii. 22 (The Four Gospels, pp. 143,276). Itis more 
easily explained as an assimilation to the Psalm. Even if it were original in 


Luke, its Christological significance cannot be unduly pressed, since in Acts xiii. 
33 the citation is applied to the resurrection. 


170 The Christ of the Synoptic Gospels 


tion of the word “beloved,” which at least suggests uniqueness, 
and may be a synonym for “only begotten.” + “hus the intelligent 
reader, who is expected to feel the allusions, is from the outset 
initiated into the secret of the Messiahship of Jesus. “The question 
as to whether there was or was not a moment when He became 
the Son of God is neither raised nor answered by the Evangelist. 
Having made it perfectly plain that Jesus is the Christ, the Son 
of God, he proceeds to record the steps by which the disciples 
were led to accept Him as the Messiah. ‘The introduction to 
the Gospel which consists of the preaching of John the Baptist, 
and the account of the Baptism of Jesus, must therefore be inter- 
preted by the whole narrative which follows, and especially by 
the Transfiguration, the Grucifixion, and the Resurrection. 

If the Marcan narrative be open to this interpretation, the 
Matthean corrections admit of a comparatively simple explanation. 
They do not involve the transformation of a human prophet into 
a supernatural Messiah, since the Marcan source itself implies a 
supernatural Christology. “hey do, however, gloss over the 
reiterated emphasis laid by St. Mark on the fact that the Messiah- 
ship of Jesus was recognised by none except by the evil spirits 
until the confession of Peter, and that it was not proclaimed in 
public until the trial before Caiaphas. “Ihe use of the baptismal 
narratives for an analysis of the religious experience of Jesus is at 
best a very hazardous procedure, and almost inevitably results in 
confining His experience within a framework supplied by an 
incomplete knowledge of the psychology of vocation. 

‘The conclusion to which these arguments have been leading is 
that, so far as the subject-matter of the Gospel is concerned, no 
one of the Synoptic Gospels can be contrasted with the others, nor 
can portions of the Gospels be set over against the remainder, nor 
is there any evidence of the existence of older lost Christian | 
documents which contradict those which survive. “The main 
problem of the origin of Christianity can, therefore, be stated 
with considerable precision. Was this unity of subject-matter 
achieved in the period between the crucifixion and the date when 
the Christian tradition was first committed to writing? Or did 


1 In the LXX the Hebrew word 1)m is translated indiscriminately by 
[ovoryevng or KYATNTOS (Judg. 4 345 Tob, til.n8,. vic 243 Ps. ceva 
Gen. xxii: 2,-12,/16, Am. Vill..10, Jer. vi. 26.5 ch. Mk. xii) 6, Lk xx teva 
Vlil. 42, 1x. 38). See references, p. 166, note r. 


Need of a Synthetic Solution ua 


it originate with the teaching of Jesus? In solving this problem 
the personal judgment of the historian can never be wholly 
eliminated. For example, even if it be granted that the Marcan 
narrative of the Baptism implies a supernatural Christology, it is 
still possible for the critic to claim that Mark was himself influenced 
by a developing Christology, and that he has allowed his narrative 
to be controlled by it. ‘This must, however, remain no more 
than a supposition so long as it is supported by no documentary 
evidence ; and the necessity for some such supposition is con- 
siderably reduced if it can be shown that the elements which 
together form the subject-matter of the Gospels are capable of a 
synthesis. 


V 
GovERNING IDEAS OF THE GOSPELS 
1. The Kingdom of God 


The petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy Kingdom come. 
Thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven,” indicate that the 
phrase ‘‘ the Kingdom of God,” or “‘ of Heaven,” is more than a 
poetical representation of an ideal. It presumes that the Kingdom 
of God exists in heaven. In the immediate presence of God 
His sovereignty is complete and absolute, and heaven is the sphere 
in which that sovereignty operates perfectly and eternally. “The 
genitives which qualify the word “‘ Kingdom” are primarily 
genitives of origin. If the Kingdom is to be established on earth, 
it must come from God or from Heaven. Thus the salvation of 
men, that is their incorporation into the sphere in which the 
sovereignty of God operates, is only possible either by their ascen- 
sion into the heavens, or by the descent and extension of the 
supernatural order from heaven to earth. Salvation is therefore 
conceived of as necessarily dependent upon an act of God. ‘The 
conception that the human order can be transformed into the 
Kingdom of Heaven by a process of gradual evolution is completely 
foreign to the New ‘Testament. 

The Synoptic Gospels assume throughout that the supernatural 
order has descended to earth. “The Kingdom has come. ‘The 
Beelzebul speech (Mark iii. 20-30, Matt. xii. 22-30, Luke xi. 
14-23), in which our Lord’s interpretation of His miracles, of the 


72 The Christ of the Synoptic Gospels 


call of the disciples, and of their acceptance of His call is recorded, 
gives this classical expression. Beelzebul, the Prince of the evil 
. spirits, has usurped authority over men, and has become, as his 
name indicates, the master of the house (cf. Matt. x. 25).1 “The 
miracles of Jesus are effectual signs that a stronger than Beelzebul 
has come. “The Mighty One is robbing the Prince of evil of his 
authority, and spoiling his goods. When the twelve accepted the 
call of Jesus, they passed from the sovereignty of Beelzebul under 
the authority of the Christ ; and the family of Jesus who do the will 
of God is thus sharply distinguished from the house of Beelzebul 
(Mark il. 33-35, cf. Matt. xii. 30, Luke xi. 23). But the under- 
lying distinction is between the Kingdom of God and of His Christ, 
and the Kingdom of Satan. “The Matthean-Lucan addition to the 
Marcan narrative, “Then the kingdom of God is come upon 
you” (Matt. xii. 28, Luke xi. 20), is admirably appropriate. “The 
authority of Satan is undermined by the advent of the Christ, and 
by the descent of the Kingdom of God (cf. Luke x. 18). The new 
supernatural order has descended upon earth, and is realised in 
Jesus and His disciples. Because He is the Christ from heaven, 
they have become the sons of the Kingdom and the Messianic 
people of God, to whom the mystery of the Kingdom has been 
given. ‘Lhe true love of God and of men is thus embodied in a 
living organism. 

Judaism is, therefore, superseded and fulfilled. “The authority 
exercised by the chief priests and scribes and Pharisees passes to the | 
disciples of the Christ, and especially to the twelve apostles, who as 
the twelve patriarchs of the new people of God are to lead the 
Messianic mission to the world, to cast out devils and fish for 
men. Finally, they will sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve 
tribes of Israel: ‘‘ Fear not, little flock ; for it is your Father’s 
good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke xii. 32, xxii. 28-30, 
Matt. xix. 28, cf’ Mark i. 17, xi. 9). This radical attitude to 
Judaism, which gives point to the parable of the Wicked Husband- 
men and to the Cursing of the Fig-Tree, underlies the whole of 
our Lord’s teaching. Judaism is superseded, not because a new 

1 The name Beelzebul may mean either Lord of dung or Lord of the habita- 
tion. Mt. x. 25, and the whole sense of the Beelzebul speech, seem to demand 
a play upon words. Jesus is the true, Beelzebul the false, Lord of the house. 
The variant reading Beelezebub, which occurs in no Greek manuscript, is best 


explained by assimilation to 2 Kings, 1, 2, 6, when the significance of the name 
Beelzebul was not understood (cf. Swete, St. Mark ad Mk. iii, 22). 


Governing Ideas of the Gospels ce) 


prophet has arisen, but because the Messiah has come and effected 
the purification of the heart and brought into being the new People 
of God. The Messianic Kingdom has arrived and Judaism is ful- 
filled by the advent of the Messiah and by the actual righteousness 
which belief in Jesus carried with it. Of this Messianic purifica- 
tion and illumination the miracles are signs and symbols. “The 
blind who see, the dumb who speak, the lepers who are cleansed, 
the hungry who are fed, and the dead who are raised have their 
more important counterparts in the apostolic vision of the Christ 
at the Transfiguration, in St. Peter’s convinced declaration after 
a long period of inarticulate stammering that Jesus is the Christ, 
in the cleansing of Mary Magdalene, Levi, and Zacchaeus, in the 
Eucharistic bread and wine, and in the eternal life which is promised 
to those who leave all and follow Jesus. “The apostles, having 
heard the call of the Christ and having been incorporated into the 
supernatural order of the Kingdom, are the true believers in God 
and the true lovers of men, and as such are given especial authority. 
They are the salt of the earth, and to them is entrusted the Messianic 
purification of the world. 


2. The Humiliation of the Christ 


During the earthly ministry of the Christ all this is veiled in 
obscurity, not because the Kingdom will only come with the end 
of the world, but because He must first complete His work. “The 
humiliation of the Christ of divine necessity (Mark vill. 31) 
precedes the apostolic mission to the world, because this mission, 
to be effective, depends upon His death and glorification. Until 
this is accomplished His disciples are ignorant both of the meaning 
of His life and teaching and of their own significance for the world. 
The humiliation of the Christ underlies the Synoptic ‘Tradition 
throughout, and is carefully emphasised, as a comparison with the 
Apocalypse clearly shows. He was subject to temptation, His 
power was dependent upon faith and prayer, the sphere of His 
work was limited to Jews resident in Palestine, He was compelled 
to face the united opposition of the Jewish authorities. He spoke 
in parables and His actions were symbolic, because the Gospel 
could not be nakedly expressed. Of this humiliation the cruci- 
fixion was both the climax and the completion, for by it the Christ 
was both freed and glorified. 


174 The Christ of the Synoptic Gospels 


‘* | have a baptism to be baptised with ; and how am I straitened 
till it be accomplished ! ” (Luke xi. 50). 

“The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by 
the elders, and the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and 
after three days rise again” (Mark viil. 31). 

The death of the Christ was, however, far more than a 
necessary stage in His personal glorification; it inaugurated a new 
order, as the sacrifice on Mount Sinai inaugurated the Old Covenant. 
Our Lord’s words at the Last Supper must be taken primarily 
as assigning to His death redemptive significance. 


3. The Via Crucis 


It is not, however, suggested that this liberty of the Christ, 
accomplished through His death and glorification, will carry 
with it at once the liberty of His disciples. “They must remain in 
the world and succeed to His former position. If He was the 
humiliated Son of God, they are to be the humiliated sons of God. 
‘The persecuted and humiliated Christ 1s to be succeeded by the 
persecuted and humiliated disciples ; but whereas His work was 
limited to Jews, the sphere of their work will not be thus bounded 
(Mark xiii. 9-13, 27). In other respects they must follow in His 
footsteps. Possessing supernatural power, they will be tempted 
from within and from without to misuse it ; their power will be 
dependent, as His was, upon faith and prayer ; they must take up 
their cross, for they also will be brought before governors and kings 
for His sake! ; they must be willing to die. For some, as for 
Judas, these demands will prove too severe and they will return 
whence they had been rescued—that is, they will pass from the 
Kingdom of God to the Kingdom of Beelzebul. Into this life 
of Christian humiliation the disciples were initiated by the words. 
spoken at the Last Supper. “The Last Supper, therefore, both 

1 Professor Burkitt (Christian Beginnings, p. 147) holds that “‘ governors 
. and kings”? (Mark xiii. 9) are Roman officials and Herods in Palestine, and that 
‘the mental horizon is still Palestine, not a formal worldwide evangelization.” 
In the context, however, in which the saying stands, the horizon is not Palestine 
merely (xill. 8, 13,27). The eschatological mission of salvation before the End 
can, it is true, hardly be described as a formal evangelization. Mark xii. con- 
tains no suggestion of formality. If it be granted that the chapter refers to an . 
eschatological mission which, after the death of the Lord, the disciples are to 


lead beyond the boundaries of Palestine, there seems every reason to regard 
Mark xiii. as, at least, reminiscent of words spoken by Jesus. 


Governing Ideas of the Gospels 175 


gave formally to the death of the Christ its redemptive value and 
also formally initiated the disciples into the mystical and actual 
participation in His sacrifice and of its benefits. The disciples 
must share in His broken Body and His outpoured Blood. Only 
thus could they be enabled to continue His work, to share in His 
victory over sin and death, to take up their cross confidently and 
follow Him, and to endure the hostility of the world until the End. 


4. The New Righteousness and Eternal Life 


The Synoptic Tradition presumes eternal life to be dependent 
on moral conversion effected by belief in the Christ and by incor- 
poration into the body of the disciples of Jesus. “The apostolic 
Gospel, therefore, is both a gospel of supernatural moral purification 
and a gospel of immortality. Possessing the supernatural righteous- 
ness of the heart, the disciples possess also eternal life, and those who 
have received and maintained this righteousness need not fear the 
Judgment which is to come. “The Christian gospel of immortality 
has its roots in Jewish eschatology as transformed by our Lord, 
rather than in the cycle of ideas and experiences characteristic of 
Greek-Oriental mystery cults. 

The character of the new Messianic righteousness, upon which 
the Christian hope of ultimate immortality is based, is illustrated 
in our Lord’s teaching on marriage and divorce. Moses, He 
allowed, wisely permitted divorce, because of the hardness of men’s 
hearts, and Judaism rightly followed his teaching. But with the 
coming of the Christ and the consequent entrance of those who 
believe on Him into the sovereignty of God, this hardness of heart 
has been removed, and His disciples can not only, therefore, fulfil 
the law of God promulgated in the second chapter of Genesis, 
‘“‘ Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall 
cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (Gen. 1. 24, 
quoted Mark x. 7, 8, Matt. xix. 5), but they can even, for the sake 
of the Kingdom, remain celibate without falling into sin (Matt. xix. 
12). Hence adultery and fornication among Christians are not to 
be regarded as lapses from a moral law, but as apostasy from the 
Kingdom. Similarly, the purpose of the Sermon on the Mount is 
to describe the new Messianic righteousness by which the old 1s 
authoritatively superseded and fulfilled, rather than to construct 
a new moral law on the basis of the old. Still less is the Sermon on 


176 The Christ of the Synoptic Gospels 


the Mount a loosely constructed list of ideal moral virtues. “The 
advent of the Christ and the existence of the Messianic community 
which He has brought into being are presumed throughout. “he 
most serious humiliation of the Christians is that this righteousness 
which they have received has to be maintained in the face of 
manifold temptations, and may be lost. It is possible for the 
salt to lose its savour, and of this Judas becomes the terrible 
symbol. 

‘The emphasis on the humiliation of the Christ and on the 
subsequent humiliation of His disciples 1s crossed by the eschatology 
which alone renders the whole position tolerable and intelligible. 
Though the humiliation of the Christ ends with His death and 
resurrection, the humiliation of His Ecclesia must last until He 
returns, not this time unknown and unrecognised, but in glory, 
on the clouds, and visible to all. “Then the righteous will be 
separated from the unrighteous, and the Kingdom will be established 
in glory and for ever. ‘he final reunion of the Christ and His 
disciples is also foreshadowed in the words spoken at the Last Supper. 
The Eucharist looks forward beyond the humiliation of the Christ, 
beyond the humiliation of His disciples, to the time when it will 
be no longer possible for them to share in the sacrifice of His body 
and blood, for He will drink the wine new with them in the 
Kingdom of God (Mark xiv. 25). “The Eucharist is, therefore, 
as St. Paul says, the commemoration of the Lord’s death “ tz// he 
come”’ (1 Cor. xi. 26). But when the Kingdom will come in 
glory, or when the Christ will return, no one can know ; of this 
even the Christ Himself was ignorant. Only this is certain : 
the Gospel must first be preached to all nations, and, what is a far 
more difficult task, it must be preached in all the cities of Israel. 
But the impression given by the Synoptic Gospels is that the End 
will not be long delayed. 


VI 
CONCLUSION 


From this reconstruction it will be seen at once that a whole 
series of contrasts underlies the Synoptic Tradition. “These con- 
trasts, however, do not break the unity of the whole, since they 
are capable of synthesis. The failure of most modern scholars to 
formulate the contrasts correctly has led to their failure to recognise 
the possibility of a synthesis. The contrast is not between the 


Conclusion 1A 


Jesus of history and the Christ of faith, but between the Christ 
humiliated, and the Christ returning in glory ; the two being held 
together by the title Son of Man which suggests both (Ezek. i. 1, 
Psalm vill. 4-6, Dan. vii. 13, 14, interpreted by Enoch xlvi. 2, 
2 Esdras xiii.) : “‘ The Son of man must suffer” (Mark vill. 31) ; 
“The Son of man hath not where to lay his head ” (Luke ix. 58) ; 
‘*’Ye shall see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of power, and 
coming with the clouds of heaven’ (Mark xiv. 62); ‘“ And he 
said unto his disciples, (he days will come when ye shall desire to 
see one of the days of the Son of man, and ye shall not see it. And 
they shall say to you, Lo, there! Lo, here! go not away, nor 
follow after them : for as the lightning, when it lighteneth out of 
the one part under the heaven, shineth unto the other part under 
heaven ; so shall the Son of man be in his day. But first must he 
suffer many things and be rejected of this generation ”’ (Luke xvii. 
22-25). “The double significance of the title Son of Man may 
have caused our Lord to use it for the interpretation of His Person, 
in preference to the easily misunderstood title “ the Christ.” “The 
contrast is not between a reformed and an unreformed Judaism, 
but between Judaism and the new supernatural order by which it 
is at once destroyed and fulfilled : not between the disciples of a 
Jewish prophet and the members of an ecclesiastically ordered 
sacramental cultus, but between the disciples of Jesus, who, though 
translated into the sovereignty of God, are as yet ignorant both of 
His claims and of the significance of their own conversion, and the 
same disciples, initiated into the mystery of His Person and of His 
life and death, leading the mission to the world, the patriarchs of 
the new Israel of God. ‘The contrast is not between an ethical 
teaching and a dreamy eschatology, or between a generous humani- 
tarlanism and an emotional religious experience stimulated by 
mythological beliefs, but between a supernatural order characterised 
by a radical moral purification involving persistent moral conflict 
and the endurance of persecution, and a supernatural order in which 
there is no place either for moral conflict or for persecution. “Thus 
stated the contrasts are capable of synthesis by a fairly simple view 
of history. Judaism is fulfilled by the advent of the Christ, who 
inaugurates the new order, which is the Kingdom of God on 
earth. “The existence, however, of the Kingdom of God and of 
the kingdoms of the world together involves conflict and opposition, 
which is to last till the return of the Christ and the final destruction 
N 


178 The Christ of the Synoptic Gospels 


of evil, when the Kingdom will come in earth as it is in heaven, or, 
to use St. Paul’s phrase, when God shall be all in all. 

A synthesis of the contradictory elements within the Synoptic 
Tradition having been thus achieved, the last step in the historical 
reconstruction of the origin of the Christian religion is almost 
inevitable. “This was the Gospel proclaimed by Jesus, and these 
were the claims made by the Jesus of history for Himself and for 
His disciples. Ultimately this conclusion is, and must be, a 
subjective judgment, but it is a conclusion from which it is 
exceedingly difficult to escape. 

It remains only to point out what is gained by this alternative 
reconstruction. ‘The historian is freed from the necessity of being 
compelled to assume that a foreign influence was exerted upon 
primitive Christianity between the crucifixion and the appearance 
of the earliest Pauline Epistles, and he is therefore enabled to treat 
the development represented by the Pauline Epistles, the Johannine 
writings, and the literature of the Catholic Church of the second 
century primarily as a spontaneous Christian development. “The 
commentator will find that the New Testament is one book, not 
merely because certain documents have been collected together by 
ecclesiastical authority or by common Christian usage, but because 
it presumes an underlying unity of faith and experience. 

In conclusion it may be suggested that the results of a purely 
historical investigation of the origins of Christianity have a more 
than purely historical importance. “There seems no reason to 
doubt that the characteristic features of Catholic piety have their 
origin in our Lord’s interpretation of His own Person and of the 
significance of His disciples for the world. ‘The religion of the 
New ‘Testament provides, therefore, a standard by which the 
Catholicism of succeeding generations must be tested, and which 
it must endeavour to maintain. 


THE INCARNATION 
BY JOHN KENNETH MOZLEY 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


I. THe DocTRINE AND THE GOSPELS . : : F ei By 
I]. "THe Reaction AGAINST THE DocTRINE . : . neko 
II]. Liperatism anp EscHaToLocy : : : F ee ay) 
IV. Tue Doctrine oF THE Iwo Natures : F ; . 190 


V. FurTHER CONSIDERATIONS IN RESPECT OF THE CHALCEDONIAN 
CHRISTOLOGY . : : : : : 2 . O4 


VI. Finat DirricutTies As TO THE DoctrRINE OF THE INCARNA- 
TION EXAMINED : : ; : . 196 


APPENDIX ON MIRACLE . : : : . . 199 


Tue doctrine of the Person of Christ, in its historic form, gives 
the fullest illumination to the doctrine of God and the fullest 
expression of the doctrine of grace. “That is because the theologia 
Christi is essentially, as Kaftan, the theologian of the Ritschlian 
right wing, says, the doctrine of Christ’s Godhead. “ Christ 1s 
spoken of as God’’ : so, in opposition to assailants of the Lord’s 
real divinity, writes an anonymous author quoted by Eusebius, 
with an appeal to the Fathers of the second century. If Christ is 
perfect in His Godhead, then in Him God’s self-revelation reaches 
its highest point, nor is there any peak beyond this peak which man 
will, under the conditions of his earthly life, ever need to ascend 
in order to gain the light of a fuller knowledge of God. ‘The 
Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation rules out every thought of a 
repetition of that supreme act in which God became man. It 1s 
concerned with one who is truly God incarnate, not a temporary 
avatar of deity. And the wealth of God’s favour to man is 
pledged and given in the gift of the Son. ‘‘ How shall He not 
with Him freely give us all things?”? The great problems of 
theism, as they affect both speculative inquiry and practical 
religion, come to the fullest rest which man can enjoy, in that 
faith which has been the foundation of the victories of Christianity 
in the world and the power in which those victories have been 
won. Browning only puts in an absolute form the confidence 
which the doctrine of Christ’s Godhead inspires : 


I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ 
Accepted by thy reason solves for thee 
All questions in the earth and out of It. 


It is natural enough that round this doctrine the most dramatic 
controversy in the history of the Christian Church was fought 
out; it is equally natural that in the religious world of to-day, 
with all its cross-currents and hesitations, it is in relation to this 
same doctrine that the most real divisions, productive of the most 
far-reaching consequences, appear. ‘The religious discussions and 
confessions of faith, to which so large a space has recently been 


182 The Incarnation 


given in popular journalism, all come to their critical turning- 
point, whether the writers have perceived the fact or not, when 
the choice has to be made between a Jesus as divine as the Father 
and a Jesus whose divinity, if the term is used, is the immanental 
divinity of the race at the highest point which it has yet reached. 
And it is the crisis within all that calls itself Christian as well as 
between Christianity and the world that lies without. 


I 
Tue DocrrinE AND THE GOSPELS 


In the previous essay the question has been approached from 
the side of the study of the Gospels and of the picture which they 
give of Jesus Christ. Such a treatment is indispensable. In the 
Christian religion historical facts and theological doctrine cannot be 
detached from one another and put into separate compartments. 
‘That issue was effectively settled in principle when the Gospels 
came to be written. But the relation between the Gospels as 
documents which certainly intend (let us for the moment put it 
no higher than that) to record facts of history and the doctrine of 
the Incarnation calls for much accurate discrimination. In the 
first place, the Gospels are products of the doctrine in the form 
which that doctrine possessed about the middle of the first century 
or a few years later, and witnesses to it; they were not written 
to establish it ; that is no more true of St. John’s Gospel than of 
St. Mark’s. And, secondly, it is not necessary to hold that one, 
and only one, evaluation of the historical matter in the Gospels 
is essential to the doctrine. Among the various attempted re- 
constructions of the Gospel history and delineations of the central 
Figure, some, of course, make the interpretation which the Church 
regards as the one true interpretation at least dificult. But even 
radical criticism may compel the recognition of a mystery suz 
generis about the Person of Jesus, and not compel but allow of 
the belief that nothing less than the Catholic doctrine is an adequate 
explanation of the facts. “That the “reduced Christology,” to 
use Dr. Sanday’s phrase, of the liberal theologians of Germany 
did cohere more or less closely with views as to the unreliability 
of the Gospel narratives, especially of the Fourth Gospel, in the 
report of sayings and doings of Jesus in which the element of 
transcendence comes notably to the front, is undeniable. But 
it makes a great difference whether this element is judged to have 


The Doctrine and the Gospels 183 


been intruded into the history, because an examination and com- 
parison of strata and traditions can be brought to show or suggest 
the unauthentic character of the Gospels at the points in question, 
or whether the Gospels are pronounced to be unreliable in the 
relevant passages because of the intrusion of this element. It 1s 
not necessary, nor would it be right, to present these alternatives 
as though, in practice, they could be quite clearly and sharply 
differentiated from one another. But in so far as a place has to 
be found for the second alternative, we are thrown back on to 
distinctively theological issues. For the determining of those 
issues other considerations must be present than the data of the 
Gospels can by themselves, if taken in isolation, supply. 


Il 


THE REACTION AGAINST THE DocTRINE 


We turn then to the doctrine itself, to the belief that in the 
Person of Jesus Christ we have the incarnation of the eternal, 
divine Son of God; and, first of all, to the reaction against that doc- 
trine, or, at least, the deflection from it, characteristic of the many 
Christologies which can be studied from rather different angles in 
Schweitzer’s ‘‘ Quest of the Historical Jesus,” and in Sanday’s 
“ Christologies Ancient and Modern.” It is noteworthy that the 
very idea of a Christology, of a doctrine of Christ’s Person, implies 
that in that Person there is present something, some overplus, as com- 
pared with what is true of other persons. It is possible to adopt 
what may be called a wholly humanitarian view of Jesus. Some 
world-views necessitate such a conclusion. In such cases the break 
with the Christian tradition is absolute. But whenever, against 
a theistic background, it is recognised that there is something 
in respect of the relation of Jesus to God which can be associated 
with none other than Him, a step has been taken within the borders 
of Christology. Though they may not be aware of the fact, 
modern writers often raise just the same problem as underlies the 
doctrine of the Church. Butin their thought there is less thorough- 
ness and less care than is manifested in the theologians of the 
Church. It is a curious fact that the accuracy with which the 
theologian feels that it is necessary for him to try to approach the 
expression of a coherent world-view seems, at times, almost to be 
imputed to him as a fault, whereas the metaphysician is not subject 
to this charge. 


184 The Incarnation 


What are the objections to a Christology which, while ad- 
mitting an overplus in the Person of Jesus, surrenders the Catholic 
doctrine of Christ’s Godhead, thus opposing itself to the Creed 
of Nicaea not less than to the Definition of Chalcedon? In the 
first place the break, at this point, is made with tradition precisely 
where tradition is strongest. For the strength of tradition con- 
sists not merely in consistency of belief but in the sense of what 
is indispensable to life and health. If the Christian conception 
of the meaning of existence is untrue, then the doctrine of the 
Incarnation falls ; but if that conception is maintained and de- 
fended as giving the true religious interpretation of the world ; 
if that interpretation is found to be consistent only with a doctrine 
of a personal God whose relations with the world are expressed 
by such terms as creation, providence and redemption ; if, further, 
Jesus is regarded as, in a special way, illuminating and even mediating 
some of those relations, as possessing (a point on which Ritschl 
laid great stress) a unique historical vocation; and if, finally, 
a distinct place is kept for the truth and importance of the resur- 
rection of Jesus, with whatever dissent from the form of the Gospel 
narratives—then, in such case, the rejection of the doctrine 
which has, in the history of Christian thought, been associated 
not formally and externally, but by the most intimate of internal 
connections, with the affirmations of Christian faith and the 
struggles, heroisms and achievements of Christian practice, needs 
to be justified by weightier arguments than are usually forthcoming. 
The pages of criticism in Loofs’ small book “‘ What is the Truth 
about Jesus Christ?” may be referred to as a careful and temperate, 
while definite, attempt to show that the Catholic doctrine is 
untenable. But apart from the fact that the Incarnation, as a 
possibility for God, cannot be disproved by the exhibition of re- 
sulting paradoxes which are then pleaded in support of the view 
that the doctrine is irrational, it is, I think, fair to say that the 
weakness of Lutheranism, and of German liberal theology in 
general, in its grasp of the idea and importance of the Church, 
makes it difficult for Loofs to appreciate the force of a question 
which might be written across his book taken as a whole—TIf, 
in such large respects as this work reveals, what the Church has 
believed about Christ is true, is not the Church likely to be right 
in that further belief about Him which makes of the Church’s 
faith a coherent unity? Obviously it is impossible to reach more 


The Reaction against the Doctrine 18 5 


than a measure of probability along the lines of such a question, 
and the argument involved possesses in this context the charac- 
teristics and the limitations of an argumentum ad rem: never- 
theless, it ought to be faced by those who agree that the Church 
is right in ascribing to Christ a unique place in relation both to 
God and to man and in striving to bring the world to an acknow- 
ledgment of this His position, but is wrong in the interpretation 
it offers—an interpretation which, in the fourth century crisis, 
was essential to the survival of Christianity as vital religion. 
Anyone who reads the fascinating account of the beginnings of 
the Arian controversy, and especially of the contrasted doctrines 
of Arius and Athanasius in Harnack’s ‘‘ History of Dogma,” may 
well feel that he is preparing for himself a position of unstable 
equilibrium if he tries to make his own what is, in effect, Harnack’s 
conclusion, that Athanasius was religiously at the centre, dog- 
matically absurd.1 

Then, secondly, Christian experience decidedly favours the 
Nicene doctrine of Christ’s true Deity. Warily though it is neces- 
sary to walk in the attempt to apprehend the character and to 
determine the tests of the argument from experience, it is possible 
for any careful observer to arrive at certain results after a broad 
survey of the course of Christian history. And whether attention 
be directed to the Church as a whole or to the great Christian souls 
who have revealed themselves to us, or, so far as that can be known, 
to the piety of the individual Christian who has achieved no super- 
eminent degree of saintliness and progressed not far along the 
mystic way, the strength and the inspiration of life has been that 
devotion and self-committal to Him, that trust in Him as Saviour 
and loyalty to Him as Lord, which finds its completion in the 
adoration of Himas God. But that is not all : not only are Christian 
piety and the Christian life historically bound up with the con- 
fession of the Godhead of Christ, so that each is intellectually 
coherent with the other, but the highest ascents and the most 
far-going adventures of Christian saints who have made of life 
a continual means of sacramental or mystical communion with 
God have been, at the same time, the attempt to win a fuller 

1] have adapted a phrase quoted by Mr. H. G. Wood as used of W. 


Herrmann, “religiously at the centre, dogmatically worthless.” Like all such 
epigrams it is too sweeping. But Herrmann’s view of the relation of Christian 
religion and faith to dogma makes it intelligible in his case, whereas in the case 
of Athanasius the disjunction is far less tolerable. 


186 The Incarnation 


knowledge of Christ, and to discover more of the meaning of 
what has been already confessed. If Christians had not believed 
in the Godhead of Christ, both the most distinctive and the most 
wonderful things in Christian experience would never have come 
into existence. “[hat to which they witness is that from which 
they have sprung. It is not simply a case of the creed being an 
intellectual explication of the experience. If that were all, 
there would be comparatively little difficulty in allowing that a 
change in the creed would, after the necessary readjustments in 
thought, make no difference to the future history of the experience. 
But what has happened, when belief in Christ’s Godhead has been 
given up and some other form of doctrine has taken its place, 
gives no ground for any-such idea. If the richest and the most 
penetrating kind of Christian experience is to continue, its con- 
ditions will remain what they have always been. 

And, thirdly, whereas the Catholic doctrine gives a rational 
interpretation of the Person of Jesus in relation to God, and, 
in connection with Him, of God in relation to the world, the 
Christologies which stand on the other side find it hard to rise 
above description to explanation. After accounts with historical 
criticism have been settled the individual scholar or theologian 
must, if he wishes to go as far as possible into the depths of his 
subject-matter, put to himself such questions as ‘‘ How is it that 
Jesus was the kind of person that the sources, after cross-examina- 
tion, show Him to have been?” and “ Why did the primitive 
communities think of Him after the fashion revealed throughout 
the New Testament?” It is not easy to answer the first question 
along the lines of a non-Catholic Christology, while keeping a 
firm hold on the uniqueness of Christ. Arianism, in its historic, 
dogmatic form, is as dead as an opinion can be, but the root- 
difficulty of Arianism remains in Christologies which are quite 
differently expressed and seem free enough from everything of 
a mythological character. Historic Arianism made of Christ an 
intermediate being whose physical characteristics isolated Him both 
from God and from man. ‘The Christologies of modern times 
do not isolate Christ so far as His nature is concerned ; as to that 
He is man, simply and exclusively, with whatever affinities to 
God man possesses in virtue of his Creator’s will, or, if the back- 
ground of thought is pantheistic rather than theistic, of the terms 
of the cosmic and evolutionary process. But the grand soli- 


The Reaction against the Doctrine 187 


tariness of Christ, His moral and spiritual difference, has been 
constantly emphasised, and much made of those features in His 
life and teaching which belong to Him as they do not belong 
to others, and which we do not associate with mankind in general. 
As to how and why this should be so, a Christology which rejects 
the doctrine of the Incarnation cannot readily explain. As the 
medium of the conceptions of the world and of God’s dealings 
with men which appear in the teaching of Jesus, Messianic and 
apocalyptic notions may rightly be exhibited. But these do not 
account for Him, and that is the heart of the problem. ‘The 
belief that in Jesus the Spirit of God was present in the highest 
degree is the nearest approach which liberal Christologies make 
to the Catholic doctrine : but this doctrine does not so much solve 
one problem as raise another, namely how we may understand 
the action of God in the choice of a particular person at a particular 
time for this superlative endowment ; or, if the stress Is laid rather 
on the achievement of Jesus than on the work of God, how we 
may understand the supremacy of Jesus in the moral and spiritual 
sphere. Christologies of an immanental or inspirational character 
involve in this case an ethical development per saltum to which 
no parallel can be offered. “This perplexity, at least, does not 
confront the believer in the Incarnation, since in that case what 
we have is not a sudden break in the normal moral history of 
the race, but a new beginning. St. Paul’s contrast drawn be- 
tween the first Adam and the second is one way of expressing the 
difference which Christ makes for mankind. But to find the 
material for such a difference in the history of one individual 
member of the race involves an assertion of spiritual relevance 
in this one person such as challenges us to go further into the 
meaning of a truth of which the phenomenon of His life affords 
the one and only example. 

But the belief that the historic doctrine of the Church has 
advantages of a purely rational character over its rivals ought 
not to prevent those who hold it from feeling a very real sympathy 
with others who have been able neither to make the Church’s 
doctrine their own nor to evacuate the Gospels of personal mystery. 
A logic which may seem insuperable to others should not lead to 
the attempt to force hard and fast alternatives on those who can 
more easily be impaled upon a dilemma than saved by one. ‘The 
Liberal reconstructions in Christology were not built to be 


188 The Incarnation 


immortal ; yet amid all the confusion of an era which inevitably 
set its sons searching for guiding-posts to take the place of their 
fathers’ landmarks, which were for the time at least, and some 
thought for ever, being submerged beneath the incoming flood 
of discovery and criticism, they did service to their own generation 
and even beyond. ‘They aimed at showing the religious view 
of the world to be concentrated in and mediated through the 
Person of Jesus; they refused to admit that Christianity was 
merely a department of religion, and religion of philosophy. 
When all the reservations on which they insisted had been made, 
it was still clearly the case that the history of Jesus Christ and 
of Christianity was much more than one chapter in the compara- 
tive history of the religious experiences of mankind. 


Ti 
LIBERALISM AND ESCHATOLOGY 


A word may be said on the greatest difference in scientific 
outlook between the Liberals on the one hand and their critics 
from the side of eschatology on the other. For the former it 
was natural to try to present the Person of Jesus as rationally 
intelligible and interpretable in terms of the standards and ideas 
of an age far later than His own. ‘That age, their own, was 
being immensely affected in its world-view by the science and 
criticism which were so striking a feature in the development 
of its intellectual life. It would almost seem as though the 
unconscious notion prevailed that He could be of use to the nine- 
teenth century only by being shown to lack the characteristics 
of a Jew of the first. So rationalisation entered not only into 
explanations of narratives in the Gospels but also into the 
delineations of the figure of Jesus. Against this the eschatologists 
set their faces, and with much right. “They had strong arguments 
to bring forward both in criticism and in theology. And when 
those who have stood on this side have been penetrating enough, 
as was the case with von Hiigel, they have deepened the impression 
of mystery, to which the Liberals were not insensitive, in con- 
nection with Jesus. “They have called attention to the strain 
and tension which the Gospels reveal, by what they report of 
some of His words and of His actions, to have beset Him. And 
so, especially in connection with the life of the Church and its 
dependence upon Him, they have heightened the sense of some- 


Liberalism and Eschatology 189 


thing extraordinary attaching to His Person by the very fact that 
they have viewed it in its historical context. The eschatological 
side of the Gospels, even if we admit the truth contained in von 
Dobschiitz’ valuable phrase “transmuted eschatology,” involves 
perplexities which neither the critic nor the theologian can hope 
wholly to straighten out. But perplexity is not the only word. 
The eschatological sayings of the Lord give us, as perhaps no 
other part of the Gospels does, the power of appreciating some- 
thing of the results in consciousness that might be expected to 
follow upon that bringing together of God and man which the 
doctrine of the Incarnation presupposes. Von Hiigel speaks 
of the “junction between Simultaneity and Successiveness ”” ; 
and unless the human were to be simply lost in the divine, 
it would seem inevitable that conflict, or at least strain, should 
follow upon junction. The narrative of the ‘Temptation suggests 
its presence in one way, the eschatological sayings in another. 
In both cases it is in connection with Christ’s Kingdom that 
the signs of tension appear, and, even more fundamentally, in 
connection with Jesus as King. In comparison with this side of 
the Gospels the language of Nicaea and still more of Chalcedon 
seems to present us with a static impassive union of two elements 
human and divine. But the comparison is not apposite, and 
ought not to be raised to the level of a contrast. In a formulary 
the content of a historical situation does not need to be mentioned, 
except in the briefest way and with reference to some fact that 
has a special dogmatic significance, as when in the Nicene Creed, 
it is said that Christ “was crucified also for us under Pontius 
Pilate.’ The abstractions of a formulary are not to be taken 
and applied as they stand to the concrete experiences of which 
historical narratives tell. |The four words of the Chalcedonian 
Definition which we translate ‘‘ without change, without con- 
fusion, without division, without separation,” do no more than 
say that in Christ what is divine remains divine and what Is 
human remains human, while they are not isolated from one 
another as they would be if there were one Person who was 
divine and another Person who was human. How the divine and 
the human acted in relation to and upon each other in Christ 
they do not try to declare. Such statements were, indeed, not 
lacking ; but, whatever be thought of them, they are not essential 
deductions from the language of approved dogmatic decisions. 


190 The Incarnation 
IV 


Tue DocrrinE OF THE “Two NATURES 


If criticism has at times its conventions which are obstacles 
to a clear understanding of the way in which progress may best 
be made, that is also true of theology. In the doctrine of Christ’s 
Person the disparagement of the formula of the “Iwo Natures 
has become in some circles almost a convention. It is one from 
which we have gained very little. Chalcedon can be criticised 
as offering to us a psychological puzzle which we can never hope 
to solve by any help which it gives us ; but if the doctrine of the 
Incarnation is true, we cannot escape from a psychological puzzle. 
If either the divine or the human element could be abandoned 
or explained away we could avoid such puzzles. But if the ele- 
ments are allowed to be there, in the life, then, whether we do 
or do not use the phrase T’wo Natures, we recognise what the 
formula recognises and puts on record. 

But, it is said, the doctrine of the Iwo Natures is incompatible 
with the unity of Christ’s Person. Dr. Mackintosh, in his well- 
known and highly (and rightly) valued book, “The Person of 
Jesus Christ,” lays great stress on this :—‘‘ The doctrine of the 
two natures, in its traditional form, imports into the life of Christ 
an incredible and thoroughgoing dualism. In place of that 
perfect unity which is felt in every impression of Him, the whole 
is bisected sharply by the fissure of distinction. No longer one, 
He is divided against Himself. . . . Uhesimplicity and coherence 
of all that Christ was and did vanishes, for God is not after all 
living a human life. On the contrary, He is still holding Himself 
at a distance from its experiences and conditions. “There has been 
no saving descent. Christ executed this as God, it is said, and 
suffered that as man.” } 

Now it is quite true that inferences can be drawn from the 
traditional statement of the doctrine which are very prejudicial 
to real unity, and that a mode of expression, “ He did this as God, 
that as man,” became habitual, which seems to suggest that the 
danger was not avoided. But that is not to say that the Chalce- 
donian phraseology is no longer possible for us, still less that we 
cannot make the meaning of Chalcedon our own. Certainly 
Christ was, and is revealed in the Gospels as, really one. His 
personal unity is as unquestionable as Dr. Mackintosh affirms, 

SR 2OAs 


The Doctrine of the Two Natures Ig! 


and as the theologians, who spoke in ways which suggest the 
bisection of which he complains, would most sincerely have 
confessed. And following out the line of thought of which Dr. 
Moberly made so much we shall say that all the experiences 
of Christ were the experiences of God in manhood. But unless 
we are prepared to say that the divine is human and the human 
is divine, we must admit a distinction between the two in the 
Person of Christ and discover a relationship between them which 
is dependent upon the fact that each of the terms “ divinity,” 
“humanity,” expresses a real truth about the one, whole Person. 
Let us take three descriptive phrases from documents of the 
fifth century and see how the truth expressed by the Two Natures’ 
formula can be expressed in language which lacks the disputed 
phrase, while at the same time exactly the same distinction is 
made as that which is inherent in the theology and terminology 
of the Two Natures. In Quicunque vult the writer points out, 
as against views which were supposed to follow from the principles 
of Apollinarius, that in the oneness of Christ we are to see not a 
conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but a taking of the manhood 
into God. ‘That does not mean a change of the substance of 
manhood, but a new relationship of manhood to Deity under the 
new conditions which have come into existence with the Incarna- 
tion. Again, Leo in his “Tome” speaks of Christ as “ com- 
plete in that which is His, complete in that which is ours” 5 
the distinction is clear enough, but so also is the intimacy of the 
relationship, since everything falls within the circle of the unity 
of the one Person. Lastly, the Chalcedonian Definition itself 
says that the one Lord Jesus Christ is “ complete in Godhead, 
complete also the selfsame in manhood.” 

If what the Church means by the word “incarnation”? is 
a true belief, it is impossible not to speak in such ways as the above 
references illustrate. If the words obog and natura had been 
scrupulously avoided, the problem, except for a greater exactness 
in definition, would have remained just the same. 

The famous passage in Ignatius concerning the one physician 
who is “spiritual and fleshly, of Mary and of God,” ? contains the 
whole theological meaning and truth of the doctrine of the ‘I'wo 
Natures. And when we say, as believers in the Incarnation 
are bound to say, that Christ is truly God and truly man, while 

1 Ad Ephes. vii, 2. 


192 The Incarnation 


at the same time we do not and cannot allow that He is the one 
in virtue of being the other, we affirm what the traditional state- 
ment affirms and mean the same thing. 

In the passage which I have quoted, Dr. Mackintosh 
exaggerates the dualistic impression which methods of employing 
the doctrine of the T'wo Natures can convey, through not allowing 
for the orthodox emphasis on the unity of the Person which is 
the correlative of the emphasis on the duality of the natures. 
And further, when he charges the doctrine with leaving no place 
for a human life as lived by God, one may ask what the truth is 
which this phrase implies and which Chalcedon omits and by 
implication denies. For it is the one orthodox doctrine—and all 
orthodox theologians, whatever differences appear among them, 
agree in this—that all the experiences that fall within the circle 
of the incarnate life are experiences of the one divine Person. 
If the objection is that in the traditional theology a number of 
experiences are selected as essentially human, and Christ is said 
to have had them in respect of the flesh or of His humanity, one 
may agree that, in so far as this suggests an alternation or action 
by turns on the part of Christ, now as God, now as man, an arti- 
ficial oscillation as between the human and the divine is introduced 
into the picture of a life which is at unity with itself. And 
further, it may be allowed that we can get very little way along 
the lines of such distinctions within the sphere of the Incarnation. 
But unless we are to be greatly embarrassed by a drift in the direction 
of pantheism we must bring in the idea of human nature as inter- 
mediate between God and human experience. “The Alexandrine 
Christology, with all its stress upon the divine aspect of the Incar- 
nation, was compelled to do this when, in its best representations, 
it stopped short of monophysitism. So Cyril of Alexandria in 
his ‘‘ Epistola dogmatica”’ explains the ascription to the Logos 
of birth and death. 

‘The doctrine of the Two Natures does not endanger the unity 
of the Person when it is associated with that other doctrine to 
which so much exception has been taken, that Christ’s human 
nature is impersonal. ‘This difficulty arises from the failure to 
distinguish between the abstract and the concrete. Catholic 
theology never meant that, in the concrete, the human nature of 
Christ lacked its persona. Leontius of Byzantium brought in 
no new idea by his employment of the term exhypostasta. All 


The Doctrine of the Two Natures 193 


that went on within the incarnate life, all that was static and all 
that was dynamic, was covered, if the word is permissible, by the 
Person of the Son. But regarded in abstraction the human 
nature of Christ is rightly spoken of as impersonal, since in this 
case and this alone discrimination can be made between human 
experiences and a human subject of the experiences. 

The Chalcedonian Christology holds its ground as the only 
one which has a right to be regarded as fully Catholic. But, 
for the very reason that its implications undoubtedly present 
difficulties, and that the attempt to follow out the meaning of 
the doctrine to its further conclusions in respect of the incarnate 
Christ can be made only with the utmost care—while yet, if it is 
to be made at all, it must be made with the boldness that comes 
from a grasp upon first principles—honourable reference is due at 
this point to the chapter entitled “Towards Solution” in the 
late Bishop Weston’s ‘‘ The One Christ.” No one but a real 
theologian could have written it. Its peculiar strength lies in 
the consistency with which Bishop Weston conceives of the 
manhood of the self-limited Logos as the one medium of all that 
took place within the state of the Incarnation. When the Logos 
took human flesh which, with its own proper and complete soul, 
He constituted in Himself so that He became truly man, living as 
the subject or ego of real manhood,” ? He imposed upon Himself 
such a “law of self-restraint’’ that ‘“‘ He has, as Incarnate, no 
existence and no activity outside the conditions that manhood 
imposes upon Him.” ‘This law, as we may call it, determined 
the character of all the relationships involved in the state of in- 
carnation. With this Bishop Weston combined the thought of 
“the essential inseparableness of the universal relations of the 
Logos from His relations as Incarnate, seeing that all are based 
in one and the selfsame Person.” 4 ‘The same idea appears in 
“Christus Veritas,” where the Bishop of Manchester speaks of 
the value of thinking of God the Son as most truly living the life 
recorded in the Gospels, but adding this to the other work of 
God.® And to such a conclusion the logic of the Christian 
doctrine of God may point, but even the best of analogies (and 
Bishop Weston’s were more than ordinarily good) can do very 
little to enable us to form a conception of the reality involved. 


1 Second edition, 1914. 2 Pp. 150 ff. SPs are sy 
SP i8 1. BrP LIAR. 


194 The Incarnation 
V 


FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS IN RESPECT OF THE 
CHALCEDONIAN CHRISTOLOGY 


On the strictly theological side the objections to the Chalce- 
donian Christology as a statement of the doctrine of the Incarnation 
are less formidable than the propounders of them suppose. And 
the failure to replace the old terminology by something equivalent 
in value and equally effective as a bulwark against restatements 
which involve an alteration not only in the form but also in the sub- 
stance of the doctrine is important ; for it is an argument against 
the view that it is no serious loss if we regard the Definition put out 
by the Council as possessing only the interest which attaches to an 
historical landmark, and of no inherent validity for the guidance 
and regulation of our conceptions. On the philosophical side 
the difficulties are greater. A doctrine of Christ’s Person that 
approached adequacy and completeness would go along with a satis- 
factory doctrine of personality. Such a doctrine did not exist in the 
fourth and fifth centuries, and though the problem of personality 
has come to the front in philosophy as one that demands serious 
attention, the stage of an agreed solution has not yet been reached. 
If what Dr. Cave, the writer of the latest monograph in English 
on the subject of Christology, calls “the beginnings of a philosophy 
of personality ” 1 in the works of modern philosophers is further 
developed, theologians may find avenues of insight into the Christo- 
logical problem opening out before them from the side of meta- 
physics. Du Bose, had he been able to handle the question 
simply as a philosopher, and been gifted with greater lucidity of 
expression, might have contributed much in this connection. 

As it is, while the Chalcedonian doctrine neither answers nor 
professes to answer all the inquiries which naturally arise out of 
the faith in Christ as one who ts both God and man, it remains 
the bulwark of that faith, and does not, as is the danger with 
some modern restatements and speculations, render the faith itself 
precarious. It has not barred the way to the study of the con- 
ditions of our Lord’s life on earth, and it has left ample room for 
different types of devotion, resting on the clearer apprehension 
of His Godhead or of His manhood. And it decisively prevents 
the conversion of a doctrine of incarnation into the highest form 

1 The Doctrine of the Person of Christ, p. 240. 


The Chalcedonian Christology 195 


of a doctrine of divine immanence. ‘This latter mode of thought 
gives us a Christ who is as we are, except that He has in richest 
measure what we have in small portions. Grace is poured into 
Christ, as into us, but in His case without stint? But, that being 
so, there is no place for the thought of an absolute dependence upon 
Christ as Redeemer. He does not have for us the value of God. 
Something in Him does, since the value of that which indwells 
Christ is divine. But so it is with ourselves. And if Christ ts, 
by virtue of God’s indwelling within Him, the most highly privi- 
leged member of the human race, then the faith, the mysticism 
and the ideas of sacramental union which we find in the New 
Testament, directed towards Him and placing Him in a position 
where He Himself and not something in Him becomes everything 
to man, cannot be justified. It is not as though immanence and 
incarnation were two theological ways of expressing the same 
thing. They are the beginnings of different religions, though 
along the divergent lines there may be points of resemblance. 
We do not know all that it means to say that God is immanent 
in a man; and we do not know all that it means to say that God 
is incarnate ; but we know enough, and the religious history of 
mankind helps us, to see that a real difference is involved. 

The faith of the Church and its doctrinal expression set before 
us Christ as one who is man, but also God. ‘That is its account 
of the facts, but what kind of a thing, viewed apart from the 
facts, the incarnation of God would be it does not try to say. But 
if we take the idea of the T'wo Natures as one which asserts the 
diverse realities of divinity and humanity, and then try to conceive 
of the consequences of those two realities being united, neither 
fused nor lost, in a Person who does not result from the union 
but is precedent to it and enters into new conditions because of 
it, we shall come under the unescapable difficulties which attach 
to the attempt to determine in the abstract the character of what 
is, ex Aypothesi, a new kind of fact and the single instance of it. 


1Cf. S. J. Davenport, Immanence and Incarnation, p. 229: ““ Does the 
immanental theory imply that... given a perfect man ¢pso facto we are 
presented with an Incarnate God? If such is a necessary implication of 
immanentism, then, as we have argued above, this is not the Christian con- 
ception of Christ. He is Absolute. Even a perfect man a priori would derive 
his perfection through the Logos, from whom he derives his constitution, his 
existence. Perfection is by no means synonymous with hypostatic union, for 
the former is possible, abstractly, for all men, but the latter belongs to the Second 
Person of the Trinity alone, that is, to Jesus Christ.” 


196 The Incarnation 


If the word “incarnation”? is rightly used, then the fact of the 
Incarnation is the one instance of the particular being its own 
universal. We should have to say the same thing in another 
way if we possessed no heritage from Aristotle and the Scholastics, 
But as to speculations in Christology, the data afford us little 
opportunity for supposing that we can lay down rules for the 
testing of the validity of our conclusions, “There have been such 
speculations, but they fall right outside the faith and the dogma 
of the Church, which is concerned to make decisions only with 
reference to the concrete historical fact. So it is with regard to 
kenotic theories, and, in partial opposition to them, to specu- 
lation as to the work of the Logos outside the circle, but during 
the period, of the incarnate life. Such a tentative idea as Dr. 
‘Temple has put forward in “‘ Christus Veritas,’ + that supposing 
from the life of Christ the presence of God incarnate were with- 
drawn we should not be left with nothing, but with the life of a 
man, belongs to the same order of untestable suggestions. All 
that the Church asserts as positive truth is what must be asserted 
if we are to think ofa real incarnation. For that, Christ must be 
both God and man, not successively and by division but wholly 
and simultaneously. 


Vi 


FinaL DIFFICULTIES AS TO THE DocTRINE OF THE 
INCARNATION EXAMINED 


When all necessary explanations have been given, two obstacles 
to faith may still remain. ‘The first is that the notion of incar- 
nation involves an incredible relationship between God and the 
finite order; that God, the Eternal, cannot be thought of as entering 
into time after the manner expressed in this doctrine. In popular 
form the objection takes exception to the discovery of a final 


1 Dr. Temple writes (p. 150): “‘ If we imagine the divine Word withdrawn 
from Jesus of Nazareth, as the Gnostics believed to have occurred before the 
Passion, I think that there would be left, not nothing at all, but a man.” If 
the Bishop had stopped there, one might feel that an incursion had been made 
into the region of the most unverifiable speculation, and that behind it lay a 
really inadequate view of the meaning of the Incarnation. But he continues, 
in words which (especially with the note calling attention to the avoidance of 
the phrase “‘ human person ’’) make all the difference in substance, whatever 
be thought of their form, “‘ yet this human personality is actually the self- 
expression of the Eternal Son, so that as we watch the human life we become 
aware that it is the vehicle of a divine life, and that the human personality of 
Jesus Christ is subsumed in the Divine Person of the Creative Word.” 


Final Difficulties Examined 197 


revelation in something which happened a long time ago in an 
obscure corner of the world. A full consideration of this ob- 
jection and of the answer to it would necessitate an examination of 
the significance of the pre-Christian history to which the title 
preparatio evangelica is given, and a discussion of the doctrine 
of God as the background against which the idea of incarnation 
becomes intelligible. Here it must suffice to point out that 
while Christian theology has repudiated all explanations of the 
Incarnation which imply that God immerses Himself in such 
a manner in the finite order that He becomes for a time no more 
than part of it, it has presented the doctrine as the one in which 
alone the gap between God and the world is effectively overcome. 
The world-order is raised potentially to the level of the divine 
life which has been manifested within it. ‘That is the truth of 
the idea of deification. But this idea is not construed as though 
the Incarnation worked like leaven to the production, by a quality 
of permeation, of a human super-nature. “The Christian tradition, 
if account is taken of its chief emphases and of its total character, 
has viewed the Incarnation in relation to God’s redemptive and 
ethical purposes, which man must receive and make his own if 
he is to know the joy of communion with God, The ethical 
confusion to-day is the result of uncertainty as to the existence of 
an ethical interpretation of life, which is the real meaning of life 
and not superimposed upon life, while a grasp of the ethical character 
of life becomes less firm in the absence of knowledge of where 
to look for the true ideals, standards and laws of moral well-being. 
‘The Incarnation brings light at the point where lack of light must 
work out in lack of power. It gives the assurance of the reality 
of moral values in God and in the world-order. It reveals God 
as making Himself one with man, and entering into the world’s 
moral life and undergoing the passion which is born of the travail 
of good in its struggle with evil, It is only as we view the Chris- 
tian Church and the Christian life, both of which derive from 
the Incarnation, that its moral fruitfulness begins to be manifested 
both extensively and intensively. But immediately following upon 
conviction of the truth of the Incarnation comes the realisa- 
tion of a new unity accomplished, which gives the best of all 
answers to those most poignant of all doubts, in which the drama 
of the world and of the soul seems to have nothing moral at its 
heart and to move towards no moral end, 


198 The Incarnation 


The other principal difficulty arises out of the study of the 
Gospels. The picture which they bring before us is held to be 
incompatible with the faith in Jesus as God incarnate. Some- 
thing that bears on this has been said earlier. “Ihe extent of the 
difficulty will depend upon the judgment formed as to the miracu- 
lous sections of the Gospel.4 But it is largely the consequence of 
a priori assumptions, which may be held with no full conscious- 
ness of their nature, as to the form which an incarnation of God 
will take. ‘The sense of injurious speculation concerning the 
Person of Christ which kenotic doctrines often produce must be 
ascribed to preliminary judgments of what is both possible and 
fitting in the case of one who is God incarnate. But the doctrine 
of the Incarnation, as the one that best satisfies all the facts which 
are bound up with the beginnings and history of Christianity 
as religion and way of life, is not to be rejected on the ground 
that the life of Jesus contains features of a surprising and un- 
expected character. Like the Apostles we have to learn that 
apparent stumbling-blocks may be the way in which God effects 
His will. If the Cross has not prevented the confession of the 
Godhead of Jesus, but has revealed the full glory of the self- 
impoverishment of the Eternal Son, the recognition of limitations 
in His knowledge and His power while on earth need not do so. 

‘The question of the finality of Christianity as the “absolute 
religion” has come into some prominence of late. It is a question 
which depends altogether for any valid answer upon the view 
taken of Christ. { Christianity is not primarily the most satis- 
factory philosophy “of religion, embodying in the most perfect 
form certain universally valid religious principles, but faith in 
a Person, to believe in whom is to believe in God. If that is not 
true, then all that is most distinctive in Christianity falls, and even 
though a sentiment about Him and an attachment to Him remain, 
Jesus Christ will no longer be the Way, the Truth and the Life. 
‘The Church at least knows what is at stake. Her life is not 
centred in herself but in Him. Her tradition, derived in the 
first instance from the faith of the apostolic age, is the rational 
account which she has given of her experience. And believing 
herself to be the trustee, not only of the Christianity which deserves 
the name, but of vital religion and of its continuance within 
human life, she sees no future for her office and no security for 

1 See the appendix to this essay. 


Appendix on Miracle 199 


her efforts except in the pan E ee ae ns and adoration of Jesus 
Christ as Lord and God. / 


APPENDIX ON MIRACLE 


The stage which the question of the miraculous element in the Gospels 
has reached seems to be describable as follows: The opposition to miracle 
from the side of those sciences which reveal the orderly flow of sequences 
in nature, and are thereby responsible for the phrase “ natural law,’ is 
no longer formidable. It is clear that no decision can be reached with- 
out taking into account the prior questions which arise around the problem 
of theism. With regard to literary criticism of the Gospels, no dis- 
covery has been made which suggests the existence of any primitive non- 
miraculous documentary deposit which has been overlaid by later strata. 

On the other hand, there is no sign of a return to the old kind of 
argument which built upon miracle (and upon prophecy) for evidential 
and theological purposes. ‘The miracles are not taken just as they stand, 
as though no problem were raised by their appearance. ‘Though they 
may be regarded as “in place” in the life of Christ, they are 
so regarded in consequence of an interpretation of His Person; 
they are not usually appealed to directly for establishing the truth of 
that interpretation. It is inevitably impossible to reach a settlement 
which could be put forward as representing objective truth, since the 
approach to a decision can be reached only along the lines of this or 
that praejudicium. The non-Christian, and more definitely the non- 
theist, may admit that the historical evidence has its strong points, that 
the narratives are not far removed in time from the facts, that they are 
not worked up into a form which suggests mere legend-mongering, and 
that they are embedded in a context which there is no reason to distrust. 
But even so he will reject them because it is impossible for him to find a 
place for them in a non-theistic world-view. His non-theistic successor 
ages hence may be able to accept them on the basis of knowledge which 
is at present hidden. But that is mere hypothesis; at the present time 
a non-theist will not and cannot accept the truth of the Gospel miracles. 
He may or may not be able to explain the accounts in a way satisfactory 
to himself and to others. But even if he cannot do that, even if his con- 
jectures seem as absurd as some of the methods taken to find a way round 
the Gospel-narratives of the morning of Easter Day and of the resurrection, 
he will be guilty of no irrational behaviour when he denies that these 
wonderful things happened. His fault lies further back. Where he 
is wrong is in not believing in God, and in Christ as the Son of God. 
In other words it is, broadly speaking, only from within the Christian 


200 The Incarnation 


tradition that he is capable of a true verdict upon the miracles of the 
Gospel.} 

But because the Christian is free from a praejudicium which is anti- 
miraculous because it is anti-theistic, he will not necessarily go on to the 
assertions which the other has denied. He still may feel difficulties. 
Unless he believes in the verbal inerrancy of Scripture he is not able to 
affirm that a miracle which appears in one of the Gospels must have 
happened as a miracle. He knows that stories of miraculous events 
appear all over the world in connection with different religions, and he 
is probably not prepared to accept those which have their place in religions 
which are rivals to Christianity. What is it, he may ask, which gives tae 
New Testament miracle-narratives a special claim to be accepted as 
true statements of wonderful occurrences in the natural order ? 

I can do no more than suggest the lines along which an answer 
may be found. In the first place I would say that the problem of miracle 
concerns not God’s will to produce certain results through acts attribut- 
able immediately to Him without the appearance of any mediate agencies, 
but God’s will to produce those results under certain conditions which 
involve a particular relationship between Him and the human soul. 
There is a mediate agency, namely man in fellowship with God. In 
a theistic world-view, which finds the greatest of all powers under God 
to be those of spiritual beings in fellowship with God, and cannot regard 
the material side of existence to be at any point simply intractable and 
unmalleable, it is impossible to set limits to the results which might be 
produced, given favourable conditions in respect of communion with 
God. 

Then, secondly, whatever be the case with other conditions under 
which miracles have been said to have occurred, the context of the Gospel 
miracles raises no difficulty. ‘That Jesus Christ lived in the most intimate 
communion with the Father, that His power was the natural fruit of that 
communion, and was manifested in a moral holiness which, apart from 
questions of “ Christology,” gives evidence of His pre-eminence among 
men, is the picture of His life which we can derive from the Gospels. 
That in His case, in response to the faith in which He drew upon God 
for help, certain things happened in God’s world of nature, which revealed 
in a way that we call miraculous the supremacy of spirit over matter, 
is not surprising. And the miracle-narratives do not appear in their 
context oddly and awkwardly as might be expected if they were really 


1’That seems to me true with this reservation. The evidence for the 
resurrection possesses a specially impressive character, and makes a more general 
appeal than any other miraculous section in the Gospels. Why this should be 
so is not difficult to understand. ‘The truth of Christianity and the truth that 
‘Christ is risen are inseparable, and part of the evidence for the resurrection is 
the account of the tomb that was found empty. 


Appendix on Miracle 201 


out of place. If the element of miracle in them is untrue, they are, if 
not conscious inventions—a most improbable supposition—, the product 
of pious imagination misinterpreting certain natural phenomena. Such 
a view does not, at least as a rule, arise spontaneously out of the study 
of the Gospels without the presupposition of a theory adverse to miracle. 
And, thirdly, if Christianity is the true religion because Jesus Christ 
is the Son of God incarnate, the record of the Gospel-miracles possesses 
this essential difference from the record of other miracles, that the personal 
Subject differs from all other persons. His divine-human sovereignty 
in the sphere of the spirit, in virtue of which He is Lord, Judge, Saviour 
and King, has as its other side a divine-human sovereignty in the sphere 
of nature. ‘The Son of Man has power in both. Incarnation and miracle 
do not, perhaps, cohere so closely together as to enable us to say that 
where the one is the other must be found; but, on the other hand, if 
the Incarnation is in any real way apprehended as the greatest event 
in human history, miracle cannot be ruled out as possessing no fitting 
occasion for the manifestation of such a mode of divine operation. 
These considerations may be particularised in reference to the miracle 
which, through its relationship to the beginnings of our Lord’s earthly 
life, Christian theology has viewed in specially close connection with the 
doctrine of the Incarnation. Here, I think, we may legitimately contrast 
with great clearness and sharpness two propositions. On the one hand, 
if we did not believe that Christ was truly the Son of God, we should 
not believe that He was born of a Virgin. Some of the Ebionites could 
do so, but that does not matter: no lengthy argument is needed to con- 
vince us that their position is untenable. On the other hand, if we do 
believe that Christ is truly the Son of God, the Virgin-Birth appears as 
a truth in respect of His advent into this world congruous with the truth 
of His eternal being and essential Deity. Chary as we may be of pressing 
arguments which cannot be conclusive because they contain an element 
of unverifiable speculation, the difficulty, to which defenders of the 
orthodox tradition, most recently the learned American Baptist scholar 
Dr. A. T. Robertson,! have called attention, of combining the notion of 
incarnation with the belief that Jesus was the Son of Joseph and Mary, 
is not an unreal one. And the fact that disbelief in the Virgin-Birth, 
and belief in other doctrines of the Person of Christ than that He was 
the Son of God incarnate, do very largely go together suggests that the 
Incarnation and the mode thereof are neither easily nor truly dissociated 
from one another. ‘The possibility of theoretical abstraction of the one 
from the other does not prove that they are not, in fact, a living unity. 
There is one point to which attention may be drawn. May we not 
lay stress on the partactively taken by the Blessed Virgin in co-operation 
with God, coming along the avenues of mystical experience? The 


1 In his book, The Mother of Jesus, p. 28 f. 


202 The Incarnation 


importance of this idea, which is not inconsonant with the story of the 
Annunciation in St. Luke’s Gospel, lies in the fact that it recognises in 
connection with the physical miracle the relevance of the human, spiritual, 
mediate agency. Mary did all that she could do, by making her will 
one with the will of God, to make it, from her side, possible for the Son 
of God to be born of her. It is, therefore, quite wrong to treat the 
Virgin-Birth as though no spiritual significance were to be discovered 
in connection with it. A narrative in which the woman’s part was of 
no essential worth, and nothing emerged except a divine decision that a 
particular birth should be brought about in a miraculous way, might 
fairly be regarded as of no spiritual consequence, except for the exhibition 
of the power of God. But that is not St. Luke’s narrative. In his 
account the faith and willingness of Mary show that, even in such an 
event as this, all the factors are not exhausted in the one idea of divine 
omnipotence. ‘There is spiritual response and spiritual preparation from 
the human side. We cannot define the exact character of the Annunciation. 
We may quite properly hold to its objective reality without thinking 
of the angel coming to the Blessed Virgin in any way parallel to a person 
coming into a room through its door. The word “ vision” may help, 
and so may the word “ experience.” In any case St. Luke has given us 
what he did not make up, a most appropriate spiritual context for the 
physical wonder of the Virgin-Birth. And both the context and the 
wonder are appropriate to Him who came, in the fulness of time, true 
God made man. 


ee rr  —~—S 


ASPECTS OF MAN’S CONDITION 


BY EDWARD JOHN BICKNELL 
AND 


JOHN KENNETH MOZLEY 


I. Sin AND THE Fai 


. Basis in Experience of the Theological pee ‘a We 


CONTENTS 


Fall and Original Sin 
2. Various Forms of these Doctrines in History 
3. The Need for Restatement 
4. The State of Fallenness 


II. Grace anp Freepom . 


. The Idea of Grace 


2. The Idea of Grace in the Bible and Christian T heology 


3. The Supernatural Order, Grace and Freedom 


AppitTionaL Nore: 


Dr. Oman’s Grace and Personality 


PAGE 
205 


205 
209 
216 
22% 


224. 


224 
228 


235 
243 


I 
SIN AND THE FALL. 
By E. J. BicKneELt. 


1. Basis in Experience of the Theological Doctrines of the 
Fall and Original Sin 


(a2) Tue doctrines of “ original sin” and “ the Fall” are pieces 
of theology. Theology is the science of religion. It springs 
from the effort of man to understand his own life. Always 
religion comes first, and theology second. Experience precedes 
reflection on experience, and the two must not beconfused. Man 
lives first and thinks afterwards. Accordingly we shall not be 
surprised to find that these two doctrines, so closely connected, 
were not revealed ready made, but have behind them a long history 
of development in time. Our first duty therefore will be to 
consider what are the facts of experience which they attempt 
to express and to correlate. What is their relation to practical 
religion ? 

Let us start from common ground on which all Christians are 
agreed. Weall have no difficulty in understanding what Is meant 
by “actual” sin, It is a concept that can be denied by no one 
who believes in a personal and righteous God and in some measure 
of free-will in man. /Actual sin denotes an act of disobedience to 
God or the state of find and heart that results from such acts of 
disobedience. Christ depicts sin as the alienation of the will and 
heart of a child from an all-righteous and all-loving Father. It 
is important to remember for our present discussion that sin is 
always against God. ‘The term belongs to the vocabulary of 
religion, not to that of moral or political philosophy. ‘To an 
atheist sin can only appear to be an illusion. “‘ Against thee and 
thee only have I sinned” is always the cry of the awakened sinner. 
No doubt historically the content of the term sin has varied 
enormously in accordance with the conception of the character of 
God attained by the community. Even within the Bible we find 
a development in the idea of sin pari passu with a development in 
the understanding of the character of God. In primitive times 


206 Aspects of Man’s Condition 


sin is simply that which displeases God. Exclusive attention is 
paid to external acts, not to motives. Individual responsibility is 
hardly recognised. Ritual irregularities are not distinguished 
from moral offences. Unintentional breaches of custom are put 
on a level with wilful disobedience. But gradually personality 
comes to its own and distinctions are made. ‘The root of sin is 
seen to lie in the will. Merely ceremonial defilement is felt to be 
of smal] account beside moral evil. “The development reaches its 
culmination in the teaching of Christ that nothing from outside a 
man can defile him but only that which comes from within. Still 
always and everywhere sin is that which offends God. We do not 
wish to discuss here the difficult question of the relative degrees 
of guilt or accountability which sin involves. We only assert 
summarily that in the last resort only God who knows the heart 
can estimate the exact measure of guilt in any case. Nor canwe 
discuss the relation between sin and thesense of sin. We deliberately 
put these problems on one side1 All that we are concerned to 
maintain is that the one constant element in the concept of sin is 
that which puts man out of fellowship with God. 

(4) So far our path is clear. When, however, we look into 
ourselves we discover the fact, so mysterious t to all who believe ina 
good God, that we find there evil tendencies and desires, similar to 
those which result from indulgence in actual sin, but which are prior 
in time to, and independent of, any such actual sin. For these bad 
tendencies and impulses we do not recognise any personal responsi- 
bility. “They are not the consequences of our own acts of choice. 
‘They seem to come to us ready made. Yet, quite as fully as those 
bad habits which are the result of actual sin, they incapacitate us 
from full fellowship with God. ‘They hamper and thwart our 
better purposes. They are not simply imperfections: they are 
positively evil. “They are loyalties that conflict with and weaken 
our loyalty to God. Nor do we show any signs of outgrowing 
them. ‘They do not disappear as we get older. In other words 
our nature, as we receive it, appears to be not merely undeveloped 
but to possess a bias towards evil, a disunion within itself, an inability 
to rise to higher levels. We find ourselves out of sympathy with 
God from the start. 

This analysis of human nature is confirmed when we look 


1 For a discussion of them see Bicknell, The Christian Idea of Sin and 
Original Sin, pp. 43-49. 


——— 


Sin and the Fall 207, 


outwards and study human life as disclosed in history and politics. 
The history of the race is that of the individual writ large. “There 
is no doubt marvellous progress in many directions. It is the 
recognition of this, that prompts the objection that man has not 
fallen, he has risen./ But the rise is only in certain limited directions. 
He has gained an increased mastery over the material world. He 
has accumulated a vast amount of experience and turned it to good 
account in ministering to the needs and comforts of the body. He 
has also advanced in intellectual knowledge. He has before him 
more material from which to draw conclusions and better methods 
of sifting and arranging that material. He has also developed more 
complex and refined moral ideals. “There is among civilised men 
less open brutality and cruelty, less violence and unabashed lawless- 
ness. But there is no evidence that his moral and spiritual powers 
have proportionately developed. The wonderful inventions of 
science are in themselves morally neutral. “They may be used in 
the interests of the common good or for selfish ends. Science 
provides impartially a hospital or the latest poison bomb. It may 
well prove that man’s moral powers are so inadequate to stand the 
strain of all this increasing mastery of the material world that he 
will use it to destroy himself. So, too, though the outward forms 
of human selfishness have changed, there is no ground for believ- 
ing that men are at the bottom less selfish than they were. “The 
highwayman has been superseded by the profiteer, but the only gain 
is a loss of picturesqueness. Nor do improved conditions of life 
necessarily go hand in hand with an improved condition of soul. 
Men can be as selfish and godless in a palace asina slum. Vice 
does not cease to be vice because it is gilded. “The polite and 
polished self-indulgence of the smart set hides the glory of God even 
more effectually than the brutality and coarseness of the savage. 
Nor does mere learning carry with it an increase in holiness and 
righteousness. A professor can be further from the kingdom of 
God thana coal-heaver. Nor isit enough to have higher and more 
elaborate ideals. The real question is how far we live up to them. 

In short when we study the causes that underlie the decay of 
nations and the degradation of public life, or the misuse of new 
powers and knowledge, we always come back to man himself. 
There is nothing outside him that hinders a triumphant upward 
movement turning all fresh discoveries into means for promoting 
the highest welfare of each and all. The hindrance lies in man 


- 


208 Aspects of Man’s Condition 


himself, in his inability to love the highest when he sees it and to 
subdue his antisocial impulses. History lends no support to the 
idea that these are being outgrown. At bottom the problem is one 
of moral and spiritual weakness, 

(c) ‘This impression is deepened when we turn to the human 
life and example of Jesus Christ. “here we see man as he was 
intended in the divine purpose to become. We realise anew his 
imperfection and degradation by placing ourselves beside the 
concrete picture of the ideal. Christ shows up not only the weak- 
ness but the fallenness of human nature. His life throughout is 
based on unbroken communion with God. He exhibits a perfect 
harmony between all the faculties and impulses of His human 
nature. His growth is uniform and unbroken. He is in full 
sympathy with the mind and purpose of God. ‘Taken by itself, 
the life of Christ might well only provoke us to despair. We see 
in it what we acknowledge that we ought to be, but what we are 
wholly unable in our own strength to attain. It makes us all 
the more conscious of the evil impulses within us. It shows up 
our “fallen” condition. ‘Thus introspection, a study of human 
history, and the example and teaching of Christ all unite in wit- 
nessing to our present state as unnatural. By what name are we 
to designate it ? 

(d) Since it is indistinguishable in all except the consciousness of 
personal responsibility from that condition of heart and will which 
results from actual sin, in theology it has long received the name 
of “original sin.” Indeed the two are so closely intertwined in 
actual experience that it is often hard to distinguish them. “The 
alienation from God that they produce is almost identical. We 
cannot wonder at the choice of the term, “To-day, however, the 
term “original sin” is widely criticised, and with good reason. 
Many writers argue that the word sin should be restricted to 
actual sin—that is, to states of character or conduct for which the 
individual is personally responsible by acts of moral choice. “The 
wider use of the term, they say, only leads to confusion of thought 
and endangers morality. It is a relic of the days when the con- 
cept of sin had not yet been moralised. Its retention to-day only 
tends to blur the sense of the heinousness of sin or to lead to morbid 
scruples. If we were starting theological terminology, there 
would be much to be said for a clearer distinction. But the use 
of the term sin to include other states of character than those for 


Sin and the Fall 209 


which the individual is personally responsible, not only has a long 
history behind it, but witnesses to certain truths of great im- 
portance. What are we to substitute for the phrase * original 
sin’? ? Various suggestions have been made, but none of them 
are entirely satisfactory. “Inherited infirmity” expresses the 
important truth that our unhappy condition does not carry with 
it guilt in the sense of accountability or expose us personally to 
the wrath of God, but is hardly adequate to the seriousness of the 
situation. ‘* Moral disease” has the advantage that it brings out 
the positive danger to spiritual health. But neither phrase 
sufficiently emphasises the important truth that by this state of 
heart and will we are disqualified for that full communion with 
God which is the indispensable condition of all sound human life. 
Religion is not mere morality, but is a walking with God ; and 
“two cannot walk together unless they be agreed.” Further, the 
old term has this additional advantage that it leaves room for the 
idea of corporate sin. In his moral and spiritual life the individual 
is interpenetrated by the community. The will of the community 
is not simply the sum-total of the wills of the individual members 
who compose it, though indeed it has no actual existence outside 
of or apart from them. ‘There is such a thing as a group mind, 
though probably not a group consciousness. And though an act 
of moral choice can only be made by an individual, he makes it 
not as an individual, but as shaped and moulded by the community. 
Thus we find corporate action which can only be described as 
sinful since it is objectively opposed to the will of God, though it is 
certain that not every member of the body is personally responsible 
for it. Our Lord judged not only individuals, but cities, as 
Capernaum or Jerusalem. If we attempt to limit sin to states of 
character or acts for which the individual is personally in the 
sight of God responsible, we shall find ourselves in difficulties 
about those corporate sins which are both recognised in the 


teaching of Christ and implied by modern psychology 


2. Various Forms of these Doctrines in History 


If, then, we decide to retain the term in spite of its manifest 
disadvantages, that does not mean that we accept all doctrines of 
original sin. It is most important to study the various forms 
which this doctrine has assumed. 


210 Aspects of Man’s Condition 


(a) If we begin with the Old Testament, we find there a full 
recognition of the badness of human nature, but hardly any theory 
of original sin or any attempt to account for it. In the third 
chapter of Genesis there is a vivid picture of temptation and of 
actual sin by an act of disobedience to a command of God recog-_ 
nised as binding, but though the act of disobedience is followed by 
punishment, it is not suggested that this included a bias towards 
evil in Adam’s descendants. Further, when the conspicuous 
wickedness of a later generation is recorded, the explanation of it 
is found not in Adam’s transgression, but in the strange tale about 
the ‘sons of God” and the ‘“‘ daughters of men.” Nor is there 
any certain reference to the story of Adam to be found in the whole 
of the canonical books. When we pass on to the post-canonical 
literature, we find more than one apparent attempt to account for 
the empirically universal wickedness of man. ‘There is the 
Rabbinic doctrine, based on Genesis vill. 21, of the evil impulse 
already existing potentially in the heart of man and only waiting © 
for the right stimulus to emerge in a sinful act. ‘There are the 
more popular theories which connect man’s present condition with — 
the disobedience of Adam or with the unions of evil angels and — 
women. ‘Thus it may be said that a doctrine of original sin in 
some form was held by many in the Jewish Church in the time of 
Christ, but hardly as an official doctrine of the Church. Nor 
was there any agreed doctrine of the fall of man. ‘The word 
“ fall > does not occur in this connection in the canonical writings. 
It is first found in a quite untechnical sense in Wisdom x. 3. 

(5) In the teaching of Christ Himselfas recorded in the Gospels 
there is no formal theology of original sin. Indeed we should 
not expect such. What we do find is the full recognition of the 
facts of human nature and history which the theological doctrine 
was formulated to express. It is not too much to say that in His 
teaching and ministry He assumes that all men are in a condition 
of “fallenness.” ‘They are sick and need a physician. “They 
cannot cure themselves. “They need not only enlightenment, 
but redemption. They are in bondage to a strong and cruel 
tyrant. ‘hey are no longer free and cannot deliver themselves. 
‘They are not only undeveloped, but misdeveloped, and therefore 
must undergo not simply growth and education, but new birth. 
The existing world order is largely under the domination of evil 
powers. It resembles a field in which an enemy has sown tares 


Sin and the Fall 211 


among the wheat. “The wheat and tares are hopelessly inter- 
mixed both in the hearts of man and in all human life. Nothing 
is more startling than the way in which He assumes the presence 
of evil in all human hearts. “If ye then, being evil, know how 
to...” He says. The Lord’s Prayer includes a petition for for- 
giveness. “Lhe only class of people of whom He seems to despair 
are those who are unaware of any need for repentance or change of 
mind. We cannot develop this subject at length, but it is plain 
that in all His teaching He implied that mankind as a whole had 
strayed from the right path and swerved away from God’s purpose. 
This judgment on all men is in the sharpest contrast to His own 
claims to an unbroken communion with the Father and undimmed 
insight into and sympathy with His purposes. While He sum- 
moned all men without exception to repent He displayed no need 
of repentance Himself. No prayer for pardon or amendment for 
His own life passed His lips. His own sinlessness, if we use 
what is too negative a term to express the positive and harmonious 
energy of His life towards the Father, shows up the failure and 
disharmony of all other human lives. 

(c) In St. Paul we find the beginnings of a Christian doctrine 
of original sin, starting from the Jewish speculation which connected 
man’s present condition with the disobedience of Adam. In the 
famous sentence ‘‘ as through one man sin entered into the world, 
and death through sin ; and so death passed unto all men, for that 
all sinned : for until the law sin was in the world : but sin is not 
imputed where there is no law,” we find a foundation on which 
many large and imposing structures have been built. Unfortu- 
nately St. Paul’s meaning is most obscure. His primary interest 
in the whole chapter is in the universality and completeness of the 
redemption brought by Christ. Man’s sinful condition is only 
brought in as a foil to this. Indeed the actual sentence which 
speaks of all men sinning is never finished. It may simply make 
the statement that as a matter of fact all men after Adam did for 
some reason or other commit sin, without connecting this with 
Adam’s sin. ‘That is exegetically possible, and it may be argued 
that if ‘“‘in Adam ” was to be added, the addition is so important 
that it must have been expressed. But the context is against this 
interpretation. ‘The whole passage is based on the parallelism 
between Adam and Christ, and there is little doubt that the words 
‘“‘in Adam” are to be supplied in thought, though the fact that 


212 Aspects of Man’s Condition 


St. Paul did not actually insert them proves that the dominant 
purpose in his writing here was not to give a theory of the origin 
of sin. Further, what is the connection between the sin of Adam 
and the universal sinfulness of his descendants? Is the tendency 
to sin transmitted by heredity? ‘The passage gives no answer to 
such questions. “They clearly were not in St. Paul’s mind at 
this moment. Perhaps all that we can say with certainty is that 
Jewish tradition connected man’s present sinfulness with Adam’s 
transgression, and St. Paul assumes a general familiarity with this 
idea. If we press for a closer examination of St. Paul’s meaning, 
we may perhaps find a clue in the parallelism between “in Adam ”’ 
and “in Christ’? which pervades the whole context. Christians 
are “in Christ,” and a study of his general line of thought shows 
that this means more than that they individually adhere to Christ 
by personal faith, though it includes this. It also conveys the idea 
of membership in His Body the Church. For St. Paul the 
Christian life was always mediated by fellowship in the divine 
society, the people of God. So “in Adam” may well convey the 
idea of membership in an unregenerate humanity. This would 
suggest that Adam’s sin affected his descendants not merely by 
way of bad example, but by the subtle influences of social tradition 
in all its forms. 

It is also important to remember, though the point is often 
overlooked, that when at the opening of the Epistle, St. Paul 
develops the picture of mankind as wholly given over to sin and 
needing a new power for righteousness, he never mentions Adam. 
He never suggests that Jew and Gentile have fallen away from 
God because they inherited a weakened or depraved nature. He 
blames them for wilfully turning away from the light given to 
them. His language is consistent with a recognition of the social 
nature of sin but hardly with a strict theory of heredity. 

(2) When we turn to the early Church, it is long before we 
meet any formulated doctrine of original sin. Before the time of 
St. Augustine there is neitherin East nor West a single and consist- 
ent theory of original sin. “The early Christian writers were more 
concerned with deliverance from demons from without than with 
deliverance from an inherited bias towards evil within. In the 
main, the Greek Fathers represent a “ once-born” type of re- 
ligion. Under the influence of St. Paul’s language, they often 
allow that Adam’s sin has affected his descendants, but it is very 


Sin and the Fall ie 


difficult to be certain of the way in which they regard this effect. 
The general tendency is to lay stress on the inheriting, through 
the solidarity of the race and its unity with its first parent, of the 
punishment of Adam’s sin rather than of the moral corruption of 
the sin itself. Where emphasis is laid on the effects of the Fall on 
human nature, they are regarded rather as a prevatio than as a 
depravatio, a loss of supernatural light and gifts. There is always 
a strong insistence on the reality of free will and responsibility. 
Even though in Origen and in Gregory of Nyssa we find the 
germs of a doctrine of original sin similar to that of St. Augustine, 
there is no doctrine of original guilt and the consequences of such 
a doctrine are not thought out. 

In the West, Tertullian’s traducianism led him to formulate a 
theory of a hereditary sinful taint—* vitium originis.” Adams 
qualities were transmitted to his descendants. Yet, as his argu- 
ments for the delay of baptism show, he was far from regarding 
human nature as wholly corrupt. Nor did he deny free will. 
But he established a tradition in the West which was continued by 
Cyprian and Hilary and developed by Ambrose until it attained a 
systematic form at the hands of St. Augustine. 

(c) In St. Augustine we reach for the first time a systematic 
theology of original sin. In considering it we must take into 
account all the factors that have gone to its construction. We 
place first among these the profound spiritual experience which 
he had undergone in his sudden and violent conversion, similar 
to that of St. Paul. His religion was essentially that of the twice- 
born type and gave him an insight into the meaning of St. Paul’s 
Epistles possessed by few of that age. As he reflected on his 
experience, it seemed to him that his former life had been one 
of entire badness from which he had been rescued by an act of 
divine love. God had done all ; he had done nothing, except to 
offer a vain opposition to God’s irresistible grace. Secondly, in 
the face of this conviction, the teaching of Pelagius that every man 
at any time, whatever his past conduct, was able to choose equally 
and freely either right or wrong, seemed unmitigated folly. No 
less inadequate was the Pelagian view of grace as primarily the 
nature bestowed on man in virtue of which he enjoyed this free 
will, or a merely external assistance such as the example of Christ, 
or at most an inward inspiration useful indeed as seconding man’s 
efforts but in no way indispensable for salvation. Accordingly in 


214 Aspects of Man’s Condition 


revolt against Pelagius, who taught that all men at birth receive a 
sound and uncorrupted human nature, he emphasised to the utmost 
the corruption of human nature. Mankind was a “ massa per- 
ditionis.””! We do indeed possess free will by nature in the sense 
that the sins which we commit are our own choice, but we do 
not possess a truly free will in the sense that we have the power 
to choose right. Apart from the grace of God we can only choose 
sin. In support of this teaching he appealed to the authority of 
St. Paul. The Pelagians argued that practically universal sin was 
due to the following of Adam’s bad example and to the influence 
of bad surroundings, regarded in a purely external way. Against 
this, relying on the mistranslation of Romans vy. 12, “ In whom 
(72 quo) all sinned,” he taught that Adam’s sin involved the sin 
of all his descendants and that they in some sense sinned when he 
did. ‘Thus, going beyond the teaching of St. Paul, he insisted 
not only on original sin, but on original guilt, a conception 
which it is impossible to reconcile with either reason or morality. 
When driven to offer a defence for this indefensible position, his 
replies were by no means either clear or consistent. At times he 
put forward the theory of our seminal existence in Adam, as Levi 
existed in the loins of Abraham. At other times he fell back on 
a mystical realism in which he held that not only Adam’s nature, 
but his personality were shared by his descendants. Elsewhere 
he appealed to the mystery of divine justice. In close connection 
with this view of inherited guilt involving the further assertion 
that unbaptised infants were condemned to hell, was the theory 
familiar to Gnostics and Manicheans, but strange in the writings 
of a Christian teacher, that inherited sinfulness consisted mainly 
in that concupiscence through which the race was propagated, 
since under the present conditions of a fallen world marriage, 
in itself right and sinless, was inevitably accompanied by passions 
which are sinful. Few theories have had more disastrous results 
in later Christian thought. Such teaching as this would seem 
logically to carry with it some form of traducianism, but, though 
he inclined towards it, he never actually adopted it. 

In this short summary of St. Augustine’s teaching it is clear 
that he has gone very far beyond the teaching of St. Paul. Not 
only does he omit the other side of St. Paul’s teaching where he 
insists on the need of human effort, but the novel conception of 


1 e.g. De correptione et gratia, 12. 


eer 


Sin and the Fall ks 


original guilt gives a new colour to the concept of original sin. 
‘To St. Paul, original sin is of the nature of a deadly spiritual 


disease disabling man from full fellowship with God, objectively 


contrary to the will of God and in that sense sinful, but not blame- 


worthy. Men stricken with it are unable to help themselves, 
but their plight appeals to God’s pity rather than to God’s wrath. 
This teaching does full justice to man’s need of redemption, and 
is in full accord with the facts of life. St. Augustine on the other 
hand ignores a large field of facts, and though his interpretation of 
religion goes far deeper than that of Pelagius, his theology is one- 
sided. His doctrine of man as inheriting a totally corrupt nature 
by physical transmission from a historical Adam and involving 
guilt in the sense of accountability is often taken to be the Catholic 
doctrine of original sin, but this is by no means the case. We must 
not confuse the doctrines of the Fall and of original sin with the 
Augustinian presentation of them. 

A short survey of Church history is sufficient to show that the 
complete Augustinian system has no claim to be considered Catholic 
in the true sense of the term. As we saw, the teaching of the 
Fathers before him, even in the West, gives no certain voice on the 
subject. The Church agreed with him in his rejection of Pela- 
gianism, but was by no means ready to accept the system that he 
offered in its stead. The Eastern Church has never received 
Aupustinianism as a whole. Its teaching on original sin does not 
at most go beyond that of Gregory of Nyssa. In the West his 
views aroused at once considerable opposition, especially in South 
Gaul. ‘The so-called Semi-Pelagian School protested with effect 
against his doctrine of grace and election as a novelty, and main- 
tained that even man as fallen had some power of free choice, 
though weakened, so as to be able to co-operate with grace. “The 
celebrated “ Commonitorium ” of Vincent of Lerins, in which 
“semper, ubique, ab omnibus,” is laid down as the test of 
Catholicism, was probably aimed at the teaching of Augustine. 
The Synod of Orange in 529 maintained a considerably modified 
Augustinianism. While emphasising the need of grace, including 
prevenient grace, it expressly condemned the idea of predestination 
to evil which was implied in the doctrine of irresistible grace. As 
regards the Fall it asserted that Adam’s sin affected not only himself 
but his descendants, and that it has impaired not only the body 
but the soul. Nothing however is said about entire corruption. 


216 Aspects of Man’s Condition 


In the Middle Ages the general movement was away from the 
stricter teaching of St. Augustine, in spite of the veneration for 
his name. Aquinas taught that on the positive side original sin 
was a wounding of nature, a disordered condition, the result of a 
loss of superadded graces which Adam had enjoyed in his state of 
original righteousness. In contradiction to Augustine he denied 
that natural goodness was forfeited by the Fall or free will destroyed, 
and held that concupiscence is not properly sin. Duns Scotus 
represented an even greater departure from the standpoint of 
Augustine. He insisted more strongly on man’s freedom and 
taught that the first sin, whose gravity he tended to minimise, had 
affected not man’s nature, but only his supernatural gifts. “The 
Council of ‘Trent with an ingenuity worthy of our own Thirty- 
Nine Articles contrived, while using the language of St. Augustine, 
to produce a formula which could be interpreted in accordance with 
the much milder Scholastic teaching. The Fall is said to have 
involved the loss of original righteousness, the tainting of body 
and soul, slavery to the devil, and liability to the wrath of God. 
Original sin is propagated by generation. 

It is to the Reformers that we must principally look for a re- 
vival of Augustinianism. Calvin and Luther agree in describing 
the depravity of human nature in the strongest terms, in insist- 
ing on the guilt of original sin, and in maintaining the doctrine 
of irresistible grace. “They both did what Augustine shrank from 
doing, namely, taught explicitly that some men are predestined to 
evil. Hereagain,if we study the history of Protestantism, we find 
an increasing reaction against such teaching. It is hardly too 
much to say that modern Protestantism, so far as it has any doctrine 
of the Fall and original sin, has repudiated the stern but logical 
teaching of Calvin and Luther. 


3. The Need for Restatement 


Within the last century new knowledge has accumulated which 
compels a reconsideration and restatement of the whole question. 
New data unknown to the theologians of the early Church and 
of the Middle Ages may well cause us to revise their teaching in 
the interest of truth. All that reverence for Catholic tradition 
demands is that the new theology of original sin should be no less 


Sin and the Fall 217 


adequate to the facts of the Christian life and should possess the old 
spiritual values. 

We may especially consider three sources from which fresh 
light has been thrown on the subject. 

First, literary and historical criticism have shown beyond any 
reasonable doubt that the opening chapters of Genesis do not give 
us literal record of fact. ‘They are, to use a phrase of Bishop Gore, 
‘inspired mythology.” “Vhis does not diminish their value for 
religion, however. ‘The picture of the temptation to disobedience 
followed by the act of sin is of abiding value as an analysis of the 
spiritual drama that is constantly being re-enacted in our own souls. 
No words could bring out more clearly the subtlety of temptation, 
the nature of actual sin, and the alienation from God that it brings. 
On the other hand the value of these chapters as literal history has 
been for ever shattered. There is a strange reluctance in many 
quarters to face the consequences of this discovery. Historical facts 
can only be proved by historical evidence. We have therefore no 
right to draw from the stories in Genesis deductions about the condi- 
tion of Adam before his disobedience and make them a basis for 
theories about the condition of unfallen man. How much theology 
has centred round the purely hypothetical supernatural graces of an 
Adam for whose existence we have no historical evidence Laeelghe 
chapters of Genesis do indeed bear witness to man’s conviction that 
his present condition is unnatural and not in accordance with God’s 
will. ‘They attest a sense of fallenness, but give us no information 
whatever about a historical Fall. 

Secondly, we have come to realise that man has been evolved 
from a non-human ancestry, and that he has inherited impulses 
and instincts which he shares with the lower animals. Recent 
psychology has emphasised the fact that not only the human body, 
but the human mind has been thus evolved. 

Thirdly, psychology has given us the concepts of the “ uncon- 
scious mind and purpose.” Whatever be the ultimate verdict 
about the theories connected with the names of Freud and Jung, 
there can be very little doubt that they have thrown light on the 
structure and mechanism of the human mind, and that this will 
have to be taken into account in all attempts to understand and deal 
with our spiritual life. 

How, then, can we apply these considerations to the doctrine of 
original sin? 


218 Aspects of Man’s Condition 


(2) We owe to Dr. Tennant the first attempt, at least in 
England, to reinterpret the doctrine in the light of biology. It is 
quite unfair to regard his treatment as merely naturalistic. He limits 
the term sin to actual sin, claiming that this limitation brings 
out all the more clearly the seriousness of sin. So-called original 
sin he regards as the survival in man of animal tendencies, useful 
and necessary at an earlier stage, but now felt to be an anachronism. 
Our consciousness of divided self is due to the fact that these animal 
impulses are only in process of being moralised. As man has 
evolved he has exchanged a life of merely animal contentment and 
harmony for one of moral struggle and effort. He has become 
dissatisfied with his brute life and contrasts his animal passions 
and habits with what -he would fain become. So his sense of 
dissatisfaction is really a sign of moral advance and is the 
inevitable outcome of man’s development. 

Though we are unable to accept this as an adequate explanation 
of all the facts, we owe much to Dr. Tennant for his treatment of 
the problem. But we feel that he has underestimated the gravity 
of the situation. He has explained admirably the origin of the 
raw material of our evil impulses and tendencies, but the real 
problem is not the possession of these animal tendencies but the 
universal failure to control them. We believe that the human life 
and character of Christ were based upon just such elements of 
instinct, but in Him they were directed and harmonised into a 
perfect whole. ‘There is in this material of instinct and impulse 
nothing that is intrinsically evil. It is all capable of right direction. 
The problem is that men universally fail to control and direct it. 
The mere possession of these impulses could not be called sinful 
in any sense of the term. It is in full accord with the will of God. 
But it certainly results in very much that cannot be in accordance 
with the will of a good God. We may also criticise Dr. Tennant 
on the ground that he regards sin as a purely moral problem. He 
passes over lightly the religious aspect. He has replied indeed that 
there was no need to emphasise the fact that sin is against God, 
because no one had ever disputed it. But there is always a danger of 
allowing too little weight to considerations which are taken for 
granted. Sinisa religious term and religion is more than mere moral- 
ity. “The seriousness of original sin is that it cuts man off from God 
and from that fellowship with Him for which man was made. 

1 Fournal of Theological Studies, Jan. 1923, p. 196. 


Sin and the Fall 219 


(b) Let us then lookatthe facts again. Science and psychology 
unite in teaching us that we must regard human nature not statically 
but dynamically. It does not come to us ready made. It isa 
process. When we are born, we are so to speak candidates for 
humanity. We inherit a number of quite general instincts out 
of which we build up our life through experience. We also 
inherit certain mental dispositions and capacities, though there is 
a wide difference of opinion as to their number and nature. Our 
powers are undeveloped. What if this mental structure has been 
already misformed before the conscious life begins ? May we not 
find on these lines an explanation of those phenomena which are 
comprised in the term “‘original sin” ? Older theology regarded 
men as inheriting a tendency to evil by generation much in the 
same way as physical peculiarities, “This 1s still the official 
doctrine of the Roman Church, following St. Augustine. It comes 
very near to reducing moral evil to a physical taint. Further the 
transmission of any such bias-to evil would be a case of what 
is called the transmission of an acquired characteristic. “The 
possibility of this is strongly denied by the dominant school of 
biologists. “They hold that modifications acquired during the 
lifetime of an organism cannot be passed on to its descendants by 
heredity. It is true that many scientists are of an opposite opinion, 
but until science has made up its mind on the question—and it is 
for science to decide—it is rash to explain original sin by heredity. 
Further, it is hard to see in what way any element in our nature 
can have become intrinsically bad, since God created nothing evil 
in itself. fRather it is the balance of our nature that is upset, and 
desires arft-impulses good in themselves and necessary for the 
completeness of our human life have become-attached to wrong 
objects or got out of control. = 

‘ gest therefore that more weight should be attached to 
what is often called, not quite accurately, “social heredity.” We 
have already called attention to the fact that there 1S ‘no such thing 
as a mere individual. ‘The individual only comes to himself as 
a member ofa community. This truth long familiar has received 
a eerie through modern psychology. We have come 
to see that from his earliest moments, even perhaps in the period 
before birth, the infant is having his tastes and tendencies moulded 
by the influence of those around him. And all through life we 
are being shaped by social tradition in all its many and subtle forms, 


220 Aspects of Man’s Condition 


In all his moral and spiritual life the individual is being inter- 
penetrated by the moral and spiritual life of others. ‘There is a 
real solidarity of mankind. Herd instinct prompts our conduct 
far more than we like to assume and, let us remember, herd instinct 
is in itself at best morally neutral. When we have attained a 
certain stage of development, mere herd instinct tends to lower the 
moral level of the individual. We must distinguish between mere 
herd or mass suggestion and the group mind or mind of an organised 
society, which is able to raise the minds of the members of a group 
to higher levels of moral and intellectual life. This innate capacity 
for social life is then itself morally neutral. As it may be the 
condition of progress, so it may be equally the condition of move- 
ment away from the purpose of God. We may see in original 
sin the result of misdirected social influence. Some such concept 
is an intellectual necessity. F Social sin is as much a fact as social 
righteousness. All societies possess in a real sense a corporate 
mind, the product not only of its present members but of its past 
members also, and all who belong to and share its mind come 
consciously or unconsciously under its sway. We suggest that 
original sin is to be found not simply in the possession of animal 
impulses and passions imperfectly disciplined and in the failure to 
discipline them by the individual, but rather in the positive mis- 
directing of such instinctive tendencies by bad social influences at 
every stage. Psychologists have invented a new term “ moral 
disease’? to describe a mental condition in which instinctive 
tendencies which conflict with moral standards have been repressed 
into the unconscious and from there exercise a pernicious influence 
on the conscious life. Without committing ourselves to the 
position that original sin consists merely in repressed complexes, 
we may see here one way in which the moral life may be disordered 
through no fault of the individual but simply through social 
environment. 

Ina review of Dr. Tennant’s book in the “‘ Journal of Theo- 
logical Studies” 1 Mr. C. S. Gayford wrote : ‘‘ Granted that the 
propensities which constitute the fomes peccati come to us from our 
animal ancestry, and are in themselves non-moral, the last step in 
the evidence should tell us what attitude the will itself at its first 
appearance is seen to adopt towards these propensities. Is it 
neutral ? Does it incline towards that higher law which is just 


IVA Priliigo3;pyag 2: 


Sin and the Fall 221 


beginning to dawn upon the consciousness? Or is it found from the 
first in sympathy and alliance with the impulses which it ought to 
curb?’ Modern psychologists would complain that this language 
treats the will as a separate faculty, whereas they regard it rather as 
the whole man moving in response to some stimulus. But if we 
modify this view of the will, the quotation corresponds to our 
suggestion. When man becomes responsible for his actions, his 
power of choice is limited and perverted by “sentiments” and 
“complexes” formed under the influence of his social environ- 
ment during the time when his power of moral choice was still 
undeveloped. While these do not destroy his power of free choice, 
they curtail the range within which such choice is now possible. 

(c) Dr. Tennant’s view has also been attacked from another 
direction. It has been argued in several quarters lately that we 
cannot isolate the evil tendencies in man from the evil in nature : 
that the process of evolution was vitiated long before man ever 
appeared on the scene. It is impossible to suppose that a perfectly 
good and wise God would have created, say, the cobra or the 
cholera germ. It is not enough to say that the world is imperfect. 
The existence of “dysteleology” in nature, the ruthless competition 
and cruelty all go to show that it does not perfectly express the will of 
God. So the nature which man inherited from his animal ancestry 
was fallen before ever he inherited it. He appeared on the scene 
burdened by an inherently self-centred nature dominated by in- 
stinctive structures of animalism whose overpowering bias towards 
evil he could not be expected to control. Those who maintain 
such views as these make out a strong case. “They argue for a 
‘¢ Fall,” but a Fall which is “‘ pre-organic ’’—that is, prior in time 
to the whole evolutionary process. Certainly this idea clearly 
emphasises the reality and seriousness of original sin.* 


4. The State of Fallenness 


The doctrine of a Fall of some kind is an inevitable deduction 
from the recognition of original sin. If we hold that our present 
condition is not in accordance with the will of God we must 
believe that the race as a whole has fallen away from the divine 
purpose. As we have seen, we can no longer use the story in 
Genesis as historical evidence. Nor have we any other source of 


1 See e.g. Formby, The Unveiling of the Fall. 


222 Aspects of Man’s Condition 


light on the moral and spiritual condition of primitiveman. Wedo 
not even know for certain whether all mankind are descended from 
a single pair or not. Nor does the study of the scanty remains of 
primitive races throw light on our problem. It seems as if man 
had made one or two false starts, and that races who had attained to 
a certain degree of development died out. It can also be inferred 
from the possessions buried with the dead that they believed in some 
kind of future life, and therefore had some kind of religion. More 
than this we cannot say, nor does it seem as if we shall ever get any 
clear evidence on this point. It 1s quite conceivable that there once 
was a time when the human race was developing on right lines, 
a period of what we might call, to use the old term, “ original 
righteousness.” Science is more ready than it was to admit of 
leaps forward in evolution. We can picture one such when man 
became aware, however dimly, of a spiritual environment and of 
his capacity to correspond to it. It may have been that for a 
time long or short he did respond and began to develop on right 
lines and then failed to respond. He refused to make the moral 
effort to live up to his calling and so forfeited that full fellowship 
with God which could alone give him the power to control his 
animal impulses. Science cannot say anything against such a 
hypothesis. Indeed, Sir Oliver Lodge in his last book puts forth 
asimilar view. Man experienced “‘a rise in the scale of existence,” 
but fell “‘ below the standard at which he had now consciously 
arrived, “The upward step was unmistakable ; mankind tripped 
over it and fell, but not irremediably.” 1 

Another possible view is that there never existed in actual 
history any period when man fulfilled God’s purpose for him, 
but that before ever he emerged, the evolutionary process was 
marred by some rebellious spiritual influence. Some have 
attempted to revive Origen’s teaching of a Fall of individual souls 
in a pre-existent state. “[his is open to all the arguments against 
pre-existence and is hard to reconcile with the justice of God. 
If our present lot is the rightful consequence of disobedience in 
some previous existence, then it is morally useless to punish us 
for it unless we are able to remember it. Others again have put 
forward a theory of a world-soul which by some pre-cosmic act 
was shattered and defiled so that the life-force is in itself tainted. 
‘This is a piece of pure mythology, and corresponds to nothing in 

1 The Making of Man, pp. 84, 151. 


Sin and the Fall 223 


human experience. It is difficult to criticise it because it eludes 
both the understanding and the imagination. It is more reason- 
able to conjecture that the world-process has been distorted by 
rebellious wills other than human. ‘There is nothing irrational 
in supposing that there are other conscious beings than man in 
the universe. We know in our own experience the possibility of 
disobedience to the will of God. If sin can arise in our own lives 
in this way, itisnot unreasonable to hold that it arose in like manner 
in other beings who, however unlike ourselves, resemble us in 
this, that they enjoy some measure of free will. “This certainly 
can claim the support of Scripture, which assumes the activity of 
rebellious spirits other than human behind the world-order. St. 
Paul includes in the redemption won by Christ not only mankind, 
but angels above man and nature below man. 

To sum up: Christian tradition and experience unite in 
bearing witness to a belief that mankind as a whole and not merely 
individual man has fallen away from the purpose of God. What is 
important is to recognise the fact of fallenness. “The practical 
value of this belief is great. “Io believe in original sin is to face 
the facts, but not to take a depressing view of human life. It 1s 
to make an act of faith that we ourselves and human society are 
not what God intended us to be, and that our present condition 
is a libel on human nature as He purposed it. “The human race 
as a whole and every member of it needs not only education and 
development, but redemption. It cannot save itself, but must be 
as It were remade or born again. And we believe that in Christ 
God has provided exactly what we need. In Him the human race 
made a new start. 

Further, just as we saw that original sin was propagated by 
membership in a fallen humanity, so in the Church, the Body of 
Christ, we see the new people of God, the new humanity. “The 
Church is in literal truth the home of grace. By’ baptism? the 

1 The question may be asked whether the rejection of much of the tradi- 
tional theology connected with the Fall of man does not necessitate a revision of 
our doctrine of baptism. We must first insist that much of the language 
employed in connection with baptism,which is taken from Scripture, was used 
in its original context to refer to adult baptism. It dates from a time when, 
as in the Mission field to-day, infant baptism was the exception and not the 
rule. Accordingly when it is transferred to apply to infant baptism we cannot 
wonder that its meaning needs to be modified. Thus an adult coming to be 


baptised needs forgiveness of his past actual sins. He needs not only to be 
cleansed but to be pardoned. But an infant is not in the least responsible for 


224 Aspects of Man’s Condition 


Christian is born again, because he is brought within the sphere 
of the new life achieved by Christ and imparted normally by mem- 
bership in His Body. ‘‘ For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ 
shall all be made alive.”” Over against original sin we set the 
redemptive power realised through fellowship with God and with 


one another in Christ. 


I] 
GRACE AND FREEDOM 
BYs |e Wa VLOZLEY, 
1. The Idea of Grace 


Tue differences which inhere in any two individual lives are, in 
part, the result of the differences of the two persons concerned. 
But they are also, in part, the result of the differences of the two 
particular environments. For no two persons, at any stage, Is 
environment precisely the same, and the secret of a life, which may 
be revealed though very incompletely at some moment in its 
course, and is more fully disclosed when that course has reached its 
earthly end, is the secret of the interaction between the self and its 
environment. Yet this is not the whole truth. “The Christian 
sees the deeper truth of the self and its earthly environment in the 


his share in a fallen humanity. He needs indeed the grace of God to counteract 
the perverting influences which have already begun to work upon his life, 
but God cannot be said in any sense to blame him for his present condition. 
Nor can we believe that infants are personally exposed to the wrath of God. 
All that we can assert is that God hates and condemns that condition of humanity 
which shuts men out from fellowship with Himself. Only in this quite abstract 
sense can sin that is only “ original’”’ be said to deserve God’s wrath. The 
unhappy use of St. Paul’s phrase “ children of wrath ” in the baptismal service 
has been responsible for many misunderstandings. In its context, as all New 
Testament scholars agree, it only means “‘ objects of wrath.” There is no 
reference whatever to infancy. St. Paul insists that men by “ nature,” that is 
apart from the assistance of God’s grace, cannot overcome their evil tendencies 
and be pleasing to Him. Even so God’s wrath is directed, as we have seen, 
against their condition, not against themselves. God cannot condemn men for 
a state for which they are not accountable. Rather, as suffering from a disease 
of the soul which disqualifies them for the highest life, they are the objects of 
His pity and redeeming purpose. So, again, when infants are said to be born 
“in sin,” the term is being used in its widest sense, to include all tendencies of 
life that are contrary to the divine purpose. The phrase means “ born into 
an environment that will mis-shape them.” 


Grace and Freedom 225 


light of the relation of each to a higher order of reality which 
supplies the only adequate account both of what is and of what is 
intended to be. ‘There is a unity underlying variation. A two- 
fold relationship, constituting a twofold environment, forms the 
permanent setting of the life of every individual. We are one 
through our membership of a fallen and sinful humanity ; we are 
one through our membership of a redeemed humanity which offers 
us the hope of such a final liberation from all sin and every form of 
evil as will mean the fulfilment of a glorious destiny.1 

Both these are real environments. “They give the spiritual 
conditions of our lives. ‘There are certain moral facts connected 
with humanity, out of which no individual can contract. ‘This is 
clear enough of the evil. It has penetrated too deeply for any 
sort of Pelagianism to hold its ground, when the appeal goes to the 
facts. It is on the moral side that pessimism has its strength. 
There is a real facing of a mass of evidence in the belief that though 
humanity is conscious of a call to moral idealism and achievement 
it neither has nor ever will have the power to attain. The other 
condition is not equally clear. Indeed, to some it may seem too 
great a paradox to speak of humanity both as though in it a kingdom 
of evil held sway, and also as in fact redeemed. Some who reject 
pessimistic conclusions, while seeking to face bravely and honestly 
the widespread signs of evil strongly entrenched, would probably 
prefer to describe humanity and the world as to be redeemed rather 
than redeemed. But the Christian Church will never allow its 
songs of triumph to be set in the minor key. “The work of Christ 
means something more than a specially powerful movement in the 
long warfare between good and evil. ‘The two great epistles 
Colossians and Ephesians bear testimony to that. We have but dim 
conceptions and inadequate words for expressing what is known as 
the cosmic work of Christ. A veil hides from us the mysteries 
both of creation and of redemption. But the Church with all the 
richness of its life is not to be understood as the means to the attain- 
ment only of moral ends, nor is the Kingdom to be reckoned as no 
more than that “ far-off divine event” which will some day close 
the book of world-history. “The Church is here, and the Kingdom 
comes because of the eternal present value of Christ’s work of 
salvation. We have our place in a new world-order as truly as in 
that which binds us with the chains of its ancient evil. 


1 Cf. Romans viil. 18-25. 


226 Aspects of Man’s Condition 


But though the belief in a new order is characteristic of 
Christianity, the relationship of the individual to this order in 
which the old things have become new is not “ given ”’ in the same 
sense as his relationship to that sinful humanity which represents the 
continuance of the old order. For the efficacy of his member- 
ship in it depends upon his personal response to it and use of it. 
He himself, for this to be possible, must become a new creation. 
No utterance of the New ‘Testament better expresses the nature of 
the environment in which the believer has his dwelling and of the 
change which the reaction between it and himself involves than 
2, Corinthians..v..173)"\ In’ Christ’ 2°) a new. creations ftuat 
description briefly comprehends the reality of the new life as 
possessing and possessed *by the individual. And the word which 
gives the best and fullest description of this new life, expressing 
both its nature and also the individual’s proper reaction to It, is 
the word Grace. 

This word is one of the classic words of Christian theology, 
aS an exposition of its frequency and importance as yéprc¢ in the 
New ‘Testament, and of its standing in the great dogmatic schemata 
of Catholicism and of Protestantism, would show. Yet the 
framing of a wholly satisfactory conception of it has not been 
unattended by special difficulties, and both in popular religious 
thought and in theological interpretations, it has occasioned mis- 
understandings and perplexities which have not been chiefly on the 
surface or at the circumference of Christian faith. We must allow 
first of all for impressions, which can hardly be called intellectual 
conceptions, of grace as an impersonal force, a “ thing ” which can 
be brought into touch with persons by some process of permeation. 
That is the danger of the phrase “infused grace.” We cannot 
abandon it. It has both too honourable a history and too essentially 
religious a meaning. But we must not let it convey to our minds 
the idea that grace is a kind of invisible fluid which passes into 
persons and produces effects through contact. “The materialism 
of attenuated and etherialised substances is still materialism ; and 
though matter and spirit are not contrary the one to the other, 
seeing that each is dependent upon God and serves God’s purposes 3; 
though, further, matter can be used in the highest interests of 
spirit, else the Incarnation would be impossible and the sacraments 
possess no inward part ; it is always true that spirit remains spirit, 
and matter matter. Grace stands for the personal dealings of God 


Grace and Freedom 27 


with man in various ways and through various media. He does 
not start a process which ends in the pouring of grace into man ; 
but grace means God in action, regenerating, blessing, forgiving, 
strengthening. It is the suggestion of impersonal operation which 
has found an entrance into the terminology of grace that needs 
to be eradicated. ‘Then, secondly, difficulties arise in connection 
with the place given to grace and with the effects ascribed to 
its activity. It is both intellectually justifiable, and also of great 
spiritual value, to believe that man is not the victim of illusion 
when he claims to possess a measure of freedom, and that that 
freedom is never overwhelmed or destroyed. Man’s free self- 
expression is variously limited, and in no two persons is it of 
exactly the same quality, but the moral aim of life is towards an 
expansion not a contraction of it, and in all moral attainment free 
action of personality is involved. Now the workings of grace 
have been so expounded as to leave no place for freedom. The 
Augustinian tradition so emphasised the necessity of acts of will 
being in accordance with the state of human nature which lay 
behind the will, that grace was in danger of being regarded as an in- 
vasive and irresistible force which so changed man’s nature that man 
was then “‘ free” to do what had formerly been impossible for him. 
For Augustine the true freedom was the beata necessitas boni,| and 
the goal of the spiritual life. “To this description of the ideal no 
exception is to be taken : but there is grave objection to the idea that 
the human will, or, better, the willing person, never makes any 
contribution in connection with salvation except that of willing 
what he has to will because his whole being is in the control of 
a force which turns it like a ship’s rudder. 

There is no hope of escape from this annulment of freedom by 
the delimitation of the moral and the religious life as two different 
spheres, with freedom the characteristic description of the one, and 
graceoftheother. “This isan unsatisfactory and unreal compromise. 
Even if grace could ever be regarded as operating in man in such 
a way as to leave his freedom alone and not to invade that region of 
his life in which moral decisions have to be made and moral values 
achieved, that could be applied only to quite low levels of experience. 
Only on such levels is any divorcement between ethic and religion 
conceivable. Ethic is not religion, and religion is not ethic, but 


1 Cf. De Civ. Dei, xxii. 30. The phrase itself I take from Harnack’s 
History of Dogma, v. p. 113. 


228 Aspects of Man’s Condition 


only as they meet and interpenetrate in experience are the highest 
levels of either attainable.1 If grace is to be allowed for at all, 
that is progressively the case as the moral life grows to higher 
stature and becomes richer and more comprehensive. And the 
consciousness of dependence upon grace is the best way to moral 
attractiveness, It is the lack of this consciousness which is the 
most serious and suggestive defect in the pagan moral ideal. How 
little Aristotle conceives of a way out of the moral struggle whereby 
the individual may reach a higher state of goodness and abide therein 
is clear from his comparison in the seventh book of the “ Ethics” of 
the ignorance of the incontinent man, and its cessation, with the 
phenomena of sleep and awakening. ‘There is simply an alter- 
nation of contrary experiences. As for the Stoic sage, we may 
admire him, without impulse or desire to imitate him. Whatever 
theory be held of the matter, it is the union of religious dependence 
with moral independence in the Christian saint which gives him 
his pre-eminence religiously and morally. It appeals as a unity, 
not as two admirable but isolated facts lying side by side within 
one personality. 


2. The Idea of Grace in the Bible and Christian Theology 


Before we go further into the question of the presence and 
scope of grace in the Christian life, and of the character of its 
relation to freedom, a sketch of the idea of grace as we find it in the 
Bible, and of the place it occupies in the historical development of 
Christian thought, will be useful, and may point us in the right 
direction for a solution of the difficulties which have gathered 
round the subject. 

We may note at the start that the general notion involved in 
the word “‘grace”’ is, when viewed in relation to God or the gods, 
that of divine favour flowing outwards to man, and, when viewed 
from the side of man as the recipient of that favour, enhanced 
powers which may reveal themselves in physical or spiritual growth 
and capacity. According to the character and development of 
religion, so will be the conception of grace. If we take two 
definitions of grace when it is conceived in accordance with the 
whole Christian outlook—that of Dr. Gore that it is “‘ God’s love 


1 Otto’s insistence on this point has been strangely overlooked by many 
of his critics. 


Grace and Freedom 229 


to us in actual operation,” 1 and that of Dr. W. N. Clarke who 
describes it as ‘‘ the suitable expression, in such a world as this, of 
the fact that God’s gracious purpose is to bless sinners ” 2—-we see 
how far such phraseology goes beyond the primitive ideas of grace 
which we find in ethnic religions? But wherever there is the 
conception of a mysterious power or virtue attaching to particular 
things, or, more personally, of beauty and strength bestowed 
on men by a divine being, there we may recognise the rudi- 
ments of what was to become the Christian belief in grace. A 
passage in the “‘ Odyssey” shows how yéet¢ can be construed as a 
physical gift from the gods. Before his meeting with Nausicaa 
Odysseus is beautified by Athene ; she makes him “ greater and 
more mighty to behold, and from his head caused deep curling 
thick locks to flow like the hyacinth flowers . . . and shed grace 
about his head and shoulders. ‘Then to the shore of the sea went 
Odysseus apart, and sat down, glowing in beauty and grace.” * 
Yet, though materialistic or quasi-physical conceptions of the gods 
involve similar conceptions of grace, we must not exclude a 
primitive moral interpretation. The favour of the gods possesses 
this moral connotation, in that the opposite of the divine favour, 
namely the divine anger issuing in punishment, is the result of 
offences which draw down upon individual or tribe supernatural 
wrath. And though, at early stages of religion, no sharp division 
between the ceremonial and the ethical is possible, allowance must 
be made for the presence of an element truly, though in quite 
primitive fashion, ethical.® 

The Old Testament is permeated with the conviction of God’s 
gracious dealings with man. But we must recognise different 
levels of insight into the character of these dealings. “There is the 
primitive conception of grace as it comes before us in the story of 
Noah’s sacrifice ®; there is the highly developed teaching of the 
Prophets whose doctrine, on its side of hope and promise, is one 
of grace specially directed towards the Community.7 There is 

1 The Epistle to the Romans, i. p. 49. 

2 The Christian Doctrine of God, p. 89. 

8 For primitive notions of grace and the concept of “mana” see R. R. 
Marett, The Threshold of Religion, pp. 101 ff. 

4 Odyssey, vi. 229-237 (tr. Butcher and Lang). 

5 See the chapter entitled “ Morality”? in Dr. F. B. Jevons’ Introduction 
to the Study of Comparative Religion. 


6 Genesis vill. 21. 
7 Cf. Amos v. 15 3 Hosea xiv. 25 Is. xxx. 18. 


230 Aspects of Man’s Condition 


nothing akin to pagan conceptions of grace as won from super- 
natural powers through magical processes. In the sacrifices of 
the Law, it is God who through the cultus gives man the means of 
approaching Him and being accepted by Him.4 Where the Old 
‘Testament, as a whole, is incomplete is in placing so predominant 
an emphasis on the national covenant-relationship with God that 
the individual is in danger of being overlooked, and in the confine- 
ment of God’s gracious purposes and blessings to Israel. But the 
manifestation of grace as the antithesis of sin and the source of 
mercy and forgiveness 1s constantly found in the Old ‘Testament, 
beginning with the Protevangelium. It would take us too far 
away from the subject to pursue this thought further, but it may 
be said that modern misconceptions of the religion of the Old 
‘Testament and its doctrine of God are largely due to a failure to 
pay attention to the place and importance given in the Old Testa- 
ment to God’s manifestation of His grace. 

In the New Testament, though the word “ grace” is unevenly 
distributed through the various portions of its literature, the reality 
for which the word stands is of the essence of the revelation of 
God’s attitude towards man. “he Gospel is always one of grace. 
It is so in our Lord’s preaching of the fatherhood and the love 
of God, nowhere more prominently than in the parables which 
St. Luke has preserved for us.2_ And when we pass to St. Paul’s 
epistles, grace appears as “‘that regnant word of the Pauline theo- 
logy” 3 in which is contained the answer to the fact and problem 
of sin, bound up with the Incarnation and cross of the Son of God, 
and linked on, as the Dean of Wells shows, with the extension of 
the Gospel to the Gentiles.4 Anyadequate discussion of St. Paul’s 
understanding of grace would have to take account of problems 
which can only be mentioned. “These concern the universality of 


ERR ReUL ey ok Vitek ce 

2 Cf. Dr. Townsend’s The Doctrine of Grace in the Synoptic Gospels. On 
p. 106, writing of the first two parables in St. Luke xv. he says: ‘‘ In the Christian 
religion the emphasis is on the divine quest of God for man. God is the seeker, 
and these parables affirm the restlessness of His grace in Christ, until that which 
was lost is found.” Cf. what St. Paul says of ‘‘ being known of God” in 1 Cor. 
vill. 3 and Gal. iv. 9. 

3 Miss E. Underhill’s expression in The Mystic Way, p. 178. 

4 See, in his edition of Ephesians, the exposition on ii. 10, pp. 52-3: “It 
was the glory of grace to bring the I‘wo once more together as One in Christ. 
A new start was thus made in the world’s history. St. Paul called it a New 
Creation.” 


Grace and Freedom 231 


grace, the relationship in which it stands to the divine righteous- 
ness, its doctrinal connections with the Apostle’s theology of the 
indwelling Christ and of the Holy Spirit, and its bearing upon his 
conception of the sacraments. It is sufficient for our purposes to 
point out that the problems or even dilemmas of which he was 
conscious, at least in part—and we still more when we try to 
systematise the controlling features in St. Paul’s religion—must not 
be solved or evaded by any compromising formula which is always in 
danger of missing the point of the Apostle’s meaning. For him the 
true interpretation of religion depends on the recognition of the 
priority of grace to all human endeavours. ‘This grace he found at 
its richest and most illuminating in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, 
crucified and risen, and when he thought of the working out of 
God’s purposes in the ages to come, he saw it as an increasing 
manifestation of ‘‘ the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness 
towards us in Christ Jesus.” * 

As in the New Testament, so in Christian theology, grace 
is one of the dominant words. Yet in the first centuries it gained 
no special attention. ‘The sacramental associations of grace are, 
as early as Ignatius, deriving from the Incarnation and pointing 
forward to a climax in “ deification.” 2 No one was concerned 
to go deeply into the question of the effect of grace upon human 
freedom. Origen has something to say on the matter, and ends his 
discussion with the declaration that both the divine and the human 
element must be maintained.’ But for the full significance of grace 
to be expounded, both a man of quite uncommon religious history 
and genius and the occasion of a great controversy were necessary. 
The need was supplied by Augustine and the issues which rose 
round the sharp reactions from one another of himself and Pelagius. 
We must leave on one side the story of that first great clash of 
rival efforts to state a Christian anthropology. Suffice it to say 
that Augustine’s whole doctrine of grace rests on two pillars 
which rise from the ground of one of the profoundest of religious 
experiences. One of them stands for the absolute necessity of 
grace, as the source of all real goodness, the other for the character 
of grace as real power infused into the human heart. <A deter- 
minist in the modern philosophical sense Augustine was 


1 Eph. il. 7. 
2 Ad Ephes. xx. Cf. also Irenaeus, Haer. v. 2, 3- 
3 De Principtis, ill. 1, 22. 


232 Aspects of Man’s Condition 


not. But the only freedom which interested him was freedom to 
do right, and that freedom was obtainable through grace alone. 
His opponents, on the other hand, conceived of grace as no more 
than a help, interpreted it, partly at least, as a description of such 
external assistance to well-doing as law and doctrine,? and dis- 
played great zeal for the emphasising of man’s natural freedom 
to choose the good, and of the obligation resting upon him pre- 
cisely in virtue of that freedom. Augustine triumphed, but 
within the Catholic Church Augustinianism as a fully articulated 
system has, practically from the first, been subject to reservations. 
When in a.p. 529 the Council of Arausio or Orange, while 
maintaining against Pelagianism or Pelagianising tendencies that 
grace was necessary and.prevenient and not based on antecedent 
merits, declared that sufficient grace was given to all the baptised,? 
a place was left for the action of the will which involved by 
implication a kind of differentiation between grace and freedom 
that Augustine could not have admitted.4 For Augustine identified 
salvation with the gift of final perseverance, which was not bestowed 
on all the baptised ; and as that gift was both in itself indispensable 
for salvation, and the culmination of the economy of grace, 
sufficient grace, in the sense of being sufficient for salvation, was 
not, in Augustine’s view, a gift of which every member of the 
visible Church had the advantage. 

Large contributions to the theology of grace were made by 
the Schoolmen, and the conception of actual grace as the motive 


1“ The libertas arbitriti in the psychological sense he never denied ; 
within the region of his ability man possesses a berum arbitrium (that is freedom 
of choice): Augustine was no determinist.”” Loofs’ Leitfaden zum Studium 
der Dogmengeschichte *, p. 411. 

2 In the De gestis Pelagi, 30, Augustine refers to Pelagius’ repudiation 
of an opinion ascribed to Coelestius that “‘the grace and help of God is not 
given for individual acts, but exists in free-will or in law and teaching.” Thus 
interpreted, grace becomes the revelation of what we ought to do, and the 
formal possibility of doing it, not a re-enforcement of man’s will by divine 
power. Harnack, while allowing that just at this point it is hardest to reproduce 
Pelagian views, concludes that the Pelagian doctrine “‘in its deepest roots . 
is godless ”’ (Hist. of Dogma, v. p. 203). 

3 ‘Towards the end of Capzt. XXV it is said: “This also we believe according 
to the Catholic faith, that through the grace received in baptism all the baptised, 
Christ helping them and working with them, can and ought, if they are willing 
to strive faithfully, to accomplish those things which concern the soul’s salvation.” 

4 For Augustine the way in which freedom and grace are related to one 
another is all-important. He says (De corrept. et grat. 17) “the human will 
does not attain grace by freedom, but rather attains freedom by grace.” 


Grace and Freedom 222 


power whereby habitual grace, consisting in the natural or theo- 
logical virtues, is exercised, is in line with the Augustinian tradi- 
tion,! though the scheme is much more elaborate. When at 
the Council of Trent neither the Dominicans, carrying on the 
Augustinian doctrine, as it had come down through St. Thomas 
Aquinas, nor the Jesuits, with their much more definite semi- 
Pelagianism and affinities with Scotist thought, were able to, secure 
full dogmatic expression for their views, the result was an August? 
nian assertion of the necessity of grace, which, at the same time, 
refused to treat the will as other than a real co-operant, with its 
own part to play by assent and by preparing itself for the grace of 
justification.” It is a synergistic doctrine, and, in view of it, 
Jansen’s later attempt to revert to the severest conclusions of the 
logic of the great African Father was sure to fail. With regard 
to the sacraments, the Council in its seventh Session taught that 
these contained and conferred the grace which they signified. 

The rigour of Augustine’s doctrine reappeared in the Con- 
tinental Reformers. Both Luther and Calvin by insisting on 
the bondage of the will of the natural man under sin left no room 
for any factor in salvation except that of grace, while Calvin’s 
emphasis upon a double Predestinarianism, in the absoluteness of 
which he went beyond Augustine, closed the circle so completely 
that man appeared as a wholly passive instrument controlled by 
forces which he could do nothing to help or resist. “he Con- 
tinental Confessions of Faith give formal statements in accordance 
with these estimates of grace and the will. An instance may be 
given from the Canons of Dort. In them it is taught that as a 
result of their corrupt nature, “all men are thus children of wrath, 
incapable of any saving good ; without regenerating grace neither 
able nor willing to return to God, to reform the depravity of their 
nature, nor to dispose themselves to reformation.” “The know- 
ledge of God which belongs to man through the faint light of 

1 «Besides the supernatural superadded ‘organism’ (habitual grace, virtues, 
and gifts), the human soul, in order to produce supernatural actions meri- 
torious of life everlasting, requires, each time, the impulse from God, which 
enables it to perform now a supernatural action” (“ Grace, Doctrine of (Roman 
Catholic),” in Hastings’ Encyc. Rel. Eth., vol. vi, p. 368). 

2 Session VI, chapter V, of the decree on Justification. The beginning 
of justification springs from the prevenient grace of God, who calls sinners in 
such a way that “through His awakening and assisting grace they may be 


disposed to convert themselves with a view to their own justification, by freely 
consenting to and co-operating with that same grace.” 


234 Aspects of Man’s Condition 


nature has no saving value. Salvation results from God’s un- 
feigned calling, and as to the unsaved “ the fault lies in men them- 
selves, who refuse to come and be converted. But that others 
obey and are converted is not to be ascribed to the proper exercise 
of free will whereby one distinguishes himself above others equally 
furnished with grace sufficient for faith, but 1t must be wholly 
ascribed to God who calls effectually in time the elect from eternity, 
confers upon them faith and repentance . . . that they may glory 
not in themselves but in the Lord.”?! It is the paradox which goes 
back to Augustine: the wicked are nightly condemned because 
they will evil, yet apart from grace it is impossible for them to will 
anything else. 

Where the Reformation theologians broke with Augustine 
was in substituting the doctrine of justification by faith only for that 
of infused grace. Yet at this point there was not perfect consist- 
ency. Luther, who in connection with the baptism of infants had 
invented the idea of infused faith, taught an Eucharistic doctrine 
which involved the thought of the infusion of the power of Christ’s 
body and blood. ‘The notion of the sacraments as efficacta signa 
gratiae belongs to him as much as to the twenty-fifth article of the 
Church of England. Earlier articles reveal, on the problem of 
grace and freedom, an Augustinianism which avoids the full rigour 
of that system by not pushing its positive statements beyond a 
certain point and by the indeterminate character of its exposition 
of predestination. 

With a brief account of the bearing of certain aspects of modern 
religious thought upon the subject with which we are concerned, 
this section may close. It is a natural deduction from all the 
evidence we possess that, to understand the place which grace holds 
in Christianity, we must view it against the background of belief in 
revealed religion as involving in a very definite way the incursion 
of the supernatural. It was precisely that belief which the growth 
of sceptical and deistic philosophies in the seventeenth and eight- 
eenth centuries assaulted ; and that meant a depreciation of the 
need for grace, for if Christianity was “‘as old as creation,” the 
whole notion of supernatural grace, however interpreted, directed 
manwards through, and as a result of, the Incarnation, was 
jeopardised. Stages in the progress of this tendency may be ob- 
served in Socinianism with its ‘school-Christianity ” and _ its 

1 See W. A. Curtis, History of Creeds and Confesstons of Faith, p. 245. 


Grace and Freedom 235 


Pelagian outlook, in the pantheistic philosophy of Spinoza, in the 
Arianism and Deism which so suddenly threatened the dogmatic 
well-being of the Church of England and of English Dissent, in the 
anti-miraculous thought of Hume, in the philosophy of the “ En- 
lightenment ” on the Continent, and evenin Kant. For Kant’s 
profound moral reaction against the “Enlightenment” left no 
place for the idea of grace, inasmuch as he held it necessary to 
exclude something which seemed to him prejudicial to human 
freedom and so to a real morality. Kant here stands in almost 
formal opposition to Augustine, since for him ‘‘ the only true means 
of grace is a morally good life.” * At the same time Kant came 
nearer to the orthodox standpoint and refused to range himself with 
a merely facile liberalism in that he both left a place for original sin 
and did not deny man’s reception of supernatural help as a supple- 
ment to his own endeavours. In the nineteenth century the 
“ liberalising of theology,” which was on the whole anti-sacramental 
as against Catholicism and anti-evangelical as against the Reforma- 
tion doctrine, was inimical to any emphasis upon grace, though the 
greatest of nineteenth-century liberal theologians, Albrecht Ritschl, 
refused to interpret Christianity either as the climax of natural 
religion or as the supreme ethic. But one must allow that his 
exact position as to grace is not at all easy to grasp. In England, 
while liberalism in theology had its influence, that could hardly be 
described as a positive and reconstructive one in the fields either 
of dogmatics or of the Christian philosophy of religion. On the 
other hand, the Oxford Movement laid the fullest stress on the 
supernatural, and brought once more into prominence the sacra- 
mental system as a principal means for the bestowal of grace; while, 
in a very different quarter, the Keswick School, with its special 
devotion to the theme of the work of the Holy Spirit in sancti- 
fication, proclaimed the inspiration of grace in the Christian life. 


3. The Supernatural Order, Grace and Freedom 


The question, What is grace and wherein may we recognise 
it? is wrapt up in that larger and most crucial question, What is 
the supernatural and where may we look for its manifestation ? 
Exception is sometimes taken to the word * supernatural,” but it 
is on any adequately Christian view impossible to dispense with the 


1 C. C. J. Webb, Problems in the Relations of God and Man, p. 95. 


236 Aspects of Man's Condition 


idea for which it stands. And whether the word be favoured 
or not, this idea of the essentially transcendent which establishes 
itself by a special kind of immanence within the natural order, 
and gives to that order a new centre, control and destiny, could 
hardly be denied by any believer in the Incarnation. But 
the Christian understanding of the relation of the supernatural 
to the natural is not content to see it concentrated in one supreme 
manifestation. ‘The new unity in Christ’s Person overflows into 
the whole of life with the power of unifying all life on a new 
and higher level. ‘There is no denial of natural goodness or the 
value of natural and this-worldly ends. But when that goodness 
and those ends are isolated from their true destiny—which is to be 
integrated into an excellence and to serve purposes which trans- 
cend their own nature—then the Apostle’s vision of a redemption 
of the natural order is retarded not only by the positive evil which 
has found a place within it, but also by the short circuit of its 
own virtues. So, as a recent writer has pointed out,! the New 
‘Testament conception of a moral life is that of one “ deriving 
from, and determined by, fellowship with God,” a life to which, 
minting a phrase of more than common value, from a passage in 
the Epistle to the Hebrews, he has given the title the “ worship- 
ful life.” And I believe that he is entirely right and gives in- 
telligible application within the sphere of morals to the distinction 
between the natural and the supernatural, when he writes : “that 
there is a fundamental difference not merely between good and 
evil, but between good and good, in the spiritual condition of 
men ; that the second includes but transcends the first ; and that 
it is the second which is of primary significance for religion, 
because it is concerned with men’s relationship to the eternal 
Good Himself—these are propositions which appear to have over- 
whelming testimony in the mind of the Christian Church.” 
And the secret of the power of the higher good lies in the revela- 
tion of the supernatural in the light of that Eternal Light which 
came into the world in the Person of Jesus Christ full of grace 
and truth. With this belief in a supernatural order belief in grace 
will be found congruous, since grace stands for the outflow into the 
existing given natural order of the powers of the world to come, 
the world which a@ parte temporis is conceived of as subsequent 
to our world and yet in present relationship to it. But that 
* E. G. Selwyn in The Approach to Christianity, pp. 138-145. 


Grace and Freedom 2217 


is not the only result. One of the problems which has followed 
‘1 the wake of modern science and has engaged the attention 
of those who have sought to vindicate the reality of the mental 
and spiritual side of human life and to refute that account of it 
which involves the conception “that all mental states are epi- 
phenomena, superfluous accessories, which arise in the course 
of the connected series of bodily changes,” + is the problem of 
freedom. A one-ordered interpretation of reality makes it, at 
least, exceedingly difficult to find any place for freedom. Stoicism 
is prophetic in the consequences of its monism. Its teaching 
was that the only freedom possible was freedom to follow 
obediently the leading of the world-order, of Zeus or Destiny. 
In any case “ follow still I must,” is the testimony of Cleanthes.? 
Modern determinism has no other message. Entirely different 
is the witness of the New ‘Testament. Unconcerned as it is, 
except by way of implication, with speculative problems that 
belong to the territory where science, philosophy and theology 
all try to make themselves at home and stake out their claims, 
+t leaves us in no doubt where it stands on this issue. Its Gospel 
is a Gospel of freedom in the moral life from the bonds of a world- 
order which, so far as it had organised itself apart from God, 
meant slavery for all who were caught in its net.3 With the 
will as the subject of philosophical discussions neither the Old 
Testament nor the New is at pains to deal. With man as the 
servant either of God or of his own lusts and the powers of evil 
the Bible is occupied from beginning to end. And had our 
modern expressions been at the disposal of the Biblical writers, 


1 A.E. Taylor, Elements of Metaphysics, p. 318. 

2 The four lines run thus: “ Lead me, O Zeus, and thou, O Destiny, 
whithersoever I am appointed by you to go. I will follow without shrinking ; 
but if I turn evil and refuse, none the less shall I follow.” 

3 At this point I insert the following note by Professor A. E. Taylor: 
“Cf. the allusions of St. Paul to bondage under the otoryeia, which seem to mean 
the planets. Is not this aimed directly against the current astrology which, as 
is now known, was, in its Hellenic form, definitely Stoic? The thought is that 
true freedom consists in getting loose from the evil world-order which is subject 
to the planetary revolutions. You get this thought equally in the Hermetic 
writings, where the main point is that the divine part in the soul came from 
God who is above the planetary system, or from the super-planetary “‘ aether ” 
where God dwells. But ow this direct contact with God is to be established 
is just what the Hermetists cannot tell us and St. Paul does tell us. It is the 
thought of the starting of the process from Goa’s side which is lacking to Stoics, 
Hermetists and Neo-Platonists alike.” 


238 Aspects of Man’s Condition 


they would not have said that the character of man’s service was 
wholly determined by the circumstances of his human nature and its 
environment—that is, by the world-order expressing itself through 
him and controlling him through his physical and psychical con- 
stitution. We must not generalise too widely ; but it is a fact 
that the ruling out of the supernatural order and of grace does not 
tend to strengthen belief in human freedom. If we think of the 
Christian view of the world as one which holds to the reality 
of freedom as the condition for there being any life truly deserving 
the title of “moral” at all, we see the significance of the fact 
that a threat to one Is often a threat to both. It suggests that 
grace and freedom alike are living forces only when we view 
reality as a whole as something richer and deeper than it is in the 
power of the natural sciences by themselves to reveal to us. And 
it also suggests that, as this enlarged world-view is able to provide 
satisfaction for those who wish to maintain the truth of human 
freedom, and also for those who assert that religious experience 
and its theological interpretation are not astray as to the actions 
upon and within human life of that divine energy which is called 
grace, It is a reasonable supposition that grace and freedom are 
not antitheses, and that the notion of discord between them errs 
by conceiving of them as though they were objects occupying 
space, and the one were excluded by the fact that the other was 
already in possession. 

‘To consider the question more closely. When we think of 
the meaning of grace, not simply as the energy of the divine 
favour and good will, but as that energy operative within the con- 
ditions of human life, bringing man into such contact with God 
that life is progressively raised to a higher than the natural level 
of this-worldly experiences, we see that grace involves a dependence 
of man upon God, a set of relationships between man and God 
over and above the fact that man is God’s creature. And because 
man’s one true end is God, it is clear that the fuller his dependence 
upon God the truer will the direction of his life be and the richer 
will be its content, since it will neither consciously limit itself to 
the goods of the natural order nor fail to interpret and use those 
goods for purposes whose realisation lies beyond that order. So 
for St. Paul the body, while belonging to the natural order, is 
also a temple of God, to be redeemed and raised in glory. 

Now when we seek to understand the meaning of freedom 


Grace and Freedom 239 


we find it impossible to give any rational account of it which does 
not take into consideration the sphere or order within which it 
is or may be a real fact, and the ends for which it exists. Freedom, 
in isolation, means nothing, and when, being expounded as a 
“ freedom of indetermination,” it is held to imply that “ our choice 
between motives is not determined by anything at all,” * it has 
neither philosophical sense nor religious value. Freedom is 
not given once for all. Rather do we begin to give it its true 
place only when we remember that life is the opportunity for 
man’s progressive growth in independent moral personality, so 
that his personality represents something truly individual and 
distinctive. Of course if the moral world—what Professor Ward 
has called the Realm of Ends—is itself an illusion, then, so far as 
freedom is concerned, cadit quaestio. But if it is reality, and a 
higher reality than the physical world, then each person can enter 
into that realm only by making moral ends his own. He cannot 
do so by being wound up like a clock to a state of exact correspon- 
dence with the objectively good. Nothing but a purely external 
relationship would thereby be brought about. The objectively 
good must become goodness in him, the very stuff of his life. And 
this goodness is of his own choice. He is good because he chooses 
to be good. If we deny this, we not only destroy freedom but 
endanger personality as well; for how shall we preserve the dis- 
tinction between person and thing, unless we say that a person 
recognises certain purposes as purposes for him, and makes active 
contribution towards the bringing of those purposes within the 
circle of his own life? This is what no thing can do, and animals 
other than man can do, if at all, only to a very limited extent. 
When we think of the religious relationship to God and the 
life of grace, the moral relationship to goodness and the life of 
freedom, dependence and independence, we seem to postulate 
two circles, never intersecting, yet each enclosing human life, 


1 The late Dr. McTaggart’s view of freedom as understood by its defenders, 
on which he based his attack. In the article, “ Libertarianism and Necessitarian- 
ism,” in Encyc. Rel. and Eth., vol. vii, Dr. Pringle-Pattison’s quotation of and 
repudiation of Dr. McTaggart’s interpretation is given. Professor Taylor finds 
the true place of freedom to lie in the comparative judgment of the goodness 
of two objects of pursuit, A and B. When the judgment is made the will is 
determined by the judgment, but the judgment is not decided in advance by 
character up to date plus circumstances. William James, it may be remembered, 
insisted on the freedom of attention. 


24.0 Aspects of Man’s Condition 


each indispensable. But in point of fact these relationships, 
blessings and ideals are held together within the unity of the 
personal life, and the moment we begin to think of the matter 
concretely, on the basis of what we can experience or observe, 
the whole idea of the delimitation of spheres, of so much being 
given to freedom and so much to grace, fades away.! It is not 
that we can be satisfied simply with an interpretation of freedom 
as “‘ ideal’’ freedom, freedom to do right, as contrasted with 
the faculty of self-determination ; but the unconstrained activity 
of personality directed towards the attainment of ends which will 
involve in the case of the personality itself a self-realisation or 
self-fulfilment lies within that system of relationships which 
represents God’s continual re-creative energy upon and within 
the world-order with a view to its establishment in a true religious 
and moral attitude to Him, ‘This is not a work of divine omni- 
potence. A kingdom of good cannot be established by force ; 
there would be no value in man being constrained from without 
to become what he was not becoming from within.2 At the 
same time, to suppose that anything good which he becomes 
from within he becomes in detachment from divine grace, or, 
differently expressed, from the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is 
an atheistic delusion, since it means a discrimination at some point 
between goodness and God. If we treat the problem as one that 
concerns the relations of two abstractions known as “ grace”’ 
and “‘ freedom ”’ to one another, we pose it in a mzlieu which for- 
bids the hope of the discovery of a way out, For it implies an 
isolation of man from God just at the point where religion, and 
especially Christianity, afirms that isolation is exactly the wrong 


1 Cf. the quotation in von Hiigel, The Mystical Element of Religion, vol. i. 
pp- 69f., from St. Bernard, Tractatus de Gratia et Libero Arbitrio, cap. xiv. 
§ 47: “* That which was begun by Grace gets accomplished alike by both 
Grace and Free Will, so that they operate mixedly not separately, simultaneously 
not successively, in each and all of their processes. ‘The acts are not in part 
Grace, in part Free Will ; but the whole of each act is effected by both in an 
undivided operation.” 

2 Two sayings of early Christian writers may be quoted in this connection. 
The author of the Epzstle to Diognetus argues that in the sending of His Son 
God was saving men by persuasion, not compulsion, “for compulsion (Gta) 
is not an attribute of God ”’ (vil. 4). And Irenaeus, in a very interesting passage 
(iv. 62, in Harvey’s edition), suggests that the education of the human race to- 
wards perfection is due to the fact that, whereas “‘God was indeed able to give 
man perfection from the beginning, man was unable to receive it for he was a 
child.” 


ee SS rot 


Grace and Freedom 241 


word and conception. No religion has contributed as much as 
Christianity to faith in the value of man, to appreciation of his 
dignity, and to hope of his destiny. It has done so by viewing 
him as the redeemed child of God, enabled by grace to enter upon 
his inheritance. 

When we speak of the grace of God we mean that the divine 
favour goes forth towards man and rests upon him to bless and 
strengthen him. Spirit communicates with spirit; the personal 
God is active towards the sanctification of the persons He has 
created and redeemed. He has ways at His disposal beyond 
our power to search out or define. Yet the phrase “ means 
of grace”’ certainly stands for a method of His activity on 
which we can count, for instruments or channels which He 
uses, through and in which we can be sure that what He 
wishes to give us is to be found. Like more than one other 
famous expression of Christian theology it is capable of being 
misconstrued. It could be taken to allow of the idea that grace 
was a quasi-physical substance poured into men, which would 
mean a passing out of the region of moral relationships into the 
region of impersonal forces. But avoidance of such an error will 
enable us to make free and natural use of such words as “‘ means”’ 
and “channels,” which stand for truths congruous with the 
character of Christianity as the religion which, above all others, 
asserts the harmony and not the discord of matter and spirit. 
And while grace is present and operative in the historical process, 
in the formation of institutions and in the material order, so that 
we shall not seek to exclude it from anything but sin, with which 
it has a different kind of relationship, there are points within the 
historical, the institutional and the material at which grace is 
revealed as of special potency and relevance. We do no injustice 
to the universal operation of grace when we point to the cross 
as the place where God has manifested the full measure of His 
graciousness, or to the Church as the body in which that gracious- 
ness is the consciously realised background and meaning of all 
its distinctive actions, or to the sacraments as objects which God 
selects, that through them as efficacia signa He may bring Himself 
into contacts of particular kinds with men and enable them to 
realise what He does. In them the divine life, everywhere 


1 Cf. Dr. Bicknell’s remark on p. 223: ‘* The Church is in literal truth the 
home of grace.” 


R 


242 Aspects of Man’s Condition 


present, imparts itself in ways which answer to man’s need, not 
only of a general environment of God’s graciousness, but also of 
acts and ordinances which mediate to him the blessings which 
the gracious God gives in answer to his various necessities. And 
the life of man, enriched by these blessings, and making a response 
which is itself possible only because man himself is never simply 
a natural phenomenon, becomes different. It is in that difference 
as it Is expressed in moral and spiritual progress that we recognise 
the grace which sanctifies. “There is nothing automatic, nothing 
magical, nothing unethical intruded at this point. Sacramental 
grace does not involve any such incredible supposition as that 
God, in this province of His loving energy on our behalf, ceases 
to deal with us as persons and treats us as though we were things. 
It would indeed be an astonishing paradox if the richness of the 
sacramental life, rooted in and bearing its flowers in the ground 
of the conviction of the reality of sacramental grace, flourished 
alongside of so profound a misunderstanding of its own nature. 
It is possible, of course, to think of the sacraments sub-personally 
and sub-ethically, but so it is possible to do of God’s grace and love, 
quite apart from the sacraments. When we think truly, as the 
Gospel inspires us to think, of God’s grace and love as realities 
which express the being of One in whom is the perfection of moral 
and personal life, we shall think of no other grace and love as 
given to us in the sacraments, that we may grow up into the ever 
fuller self-identification with the ideal of the xatvh xttotg. Nor 
is there any obliteration of freedom. ‘The life strengthened by 
the sacraments 1s one in which man, by making his own the one 
true objective and personal ideal which exists for him, the ideal of 
the perfect humanity of Jesus Christ, is on the way towards that 
highest personal achievement which we understand by the word 
character. And the more character is unified in its tendency 
and moves towards unity in expression, the freer, because the more 
completely himself, does man become in the correspondence that 
exists between himself and the spiritual order. More and more 
is he raised above the natural order, to which he is indeed linked 
as an element within it, but which is neither the explanation of him 
nor his home. _ It is only in his true home, and as he begins to be 
a native of it, that he learns the salvation which is God’s purpose 
for him, for which God’s grace is given. And as he learns that, 
depending at all times upon the grace to which he owes the re- 


Grace and Freedom 24.3 


demption won for him by Christ, he becomes what he already is, 
his Father’s son, and gains his own self. 

Christianity is the religion of redemption. And, not in 
addition to that, but in and through that, it is the way of the highest 
moral life and the completest personal attainment, a life of service 
wherein is perfect freedom. All this it is, and as a unity, and no 
one word so well explains this many-sidedness and this unity as the 
word Grace. 


ADDITIONAL NOTE 


To those who are acquainted with that very remarkable book, 
«Grace and Personality,” by Dr. John Oman, Principal of West- 
minster College, Cambridge, it may well seem strange that I have 
not hitherto referred to it. I desire neither to overlook the book, 
which, in fact, I reviewed in The ‘fournal of Theological Studtes 
(July 1920: xxi. 84), nor to fail to acknowledge the debt which 
I owe to its author. But I should have overburdened my pages 
had I referred at the various relevant points to Dr. Oman’s 
positions, or dwelt on controversial matters where I should feel 
it necessary to diverge from his conclusions. ‘* Grace and Person- 
ality’ is written round the conviction that the distinguishing 
characteristic of a moral person is autonomy, and that grace must 
be a personal relationship between God and man, involving fellow- 
ship between God and man, and not suppressing freedom. “The 
problem as he sees it is that of combining the dependence upon 
God which is an essential quality of a religious person and the 
independence which is an essential quality of a moral person. 
And the way to unity is neither by a compromise between religion 
and morality nor by the isolation of one from the other, but by 
such a relationship that ‘‘ our absolute religious dependence and 
our absolute moral independence are perfectly realised and made 
perfectly one” (p. 82). I am sure that he is right in holding 
that the problem of grace can be handled properly only when all 
vestiges of sub-personal relationships are excluded from our thought 
of what can be true as between God and man. And neither the 
Augustinian emphasis upon the irresistible might of the grace 
which saves those who are called according to God’s purpose, nor 


24.4. Aspects of Man’s Condition 


the Pelagian appeal to the obligation of obedience to the moral 
law as indicating that man has the power to keep the command- 
ments, necessarily involves that thorough personalising of relation- 
ships. On the other hand, Dr. Oman is pressing his point too 
far when he attributes a kinship to the “ extremest Catholicism 
and the extremest Evangelicalism . . . just because both 
depend on the same conception of grace as arbitrary acts of 
omnipotence.” Not only would most of the theologians impli- 
cated in this indictment have vehemently rejected the word 
‘arbitrary’: they would also have been justified in doing so 
because they did not find the source of right in God’s particular 
appointment, but in the unchangeable moral perfection of God’s 
nature. Even as to Duns Scotus important reservations have to be 
made,! while it is certainly no part of St. homas’s doctrine that 
‘“ God’s appointment makes things reasonable and right,” though 
Dr. Oman associates the two doctors in this belief (pp. 163-4). Dr. 
Oman insists on the need to recognise that “in all things God 
is gracious,” and that we should not treat “ the rest of experience 
as mere scenery for operations of grace which are canalised in 
special channels” (p. 174). Certainly ; but Catholic theology 
knows quite well that it must seek to do justice to the world and 
experience as a whole, and that it must exclude the possibility of 
contact with God and of doing God’s will from nothing whatso- 
ever except the morally evil. At the same time, whatever language 
be used, the Incarnation 1s a special channel of God’s graciousness, 
and the religion sprung from belief in it reflects that fact in ways 
which do not at all impair the truth that all experience is usable 
for the knowledge of God and for fellowship with Him. Dr. 
Oman seems to me to be too much outside the particular and 
characteristic field of sacramental praxis and theology which we 


1 See the article “ Scholasticism”’ in Encyc. Rel. and Eth. vol.xi. “ Assuming 
that the content of duty depends on the constitution of human nature, it follows 
that, if human beings were.constituted differently in certain fundamental ways, 
then the content of morality would be fundamentally altered. There is, how- 
ever, no evidence that Duns Scotus intended to teach that morality could be 
determined differently by the will of God, human nature being constituted 
as itis.” Professor Taylor draws my attention to Bonaventura, Brevilog. vi. 1, § 
(ed. minor, Quaracchi, p. 205): “‘ Huiusmodi sacramenta dicantur gratiae vasa 
et causae nec quia gratia in eis substantialiter contineatur nec causaliter efficiatur, 
cum in sola anima habeat collocari et a solo Deo habeat infundi; sed quia in 
illis et per illa gratiam curationis a summo medico Christo ex divino decreto 
oporteat hauriri, licet Deus non alligaverit suam potentiam sacramentis.” 


Grace and Freedom 245 


associate with Catholicism to be first a satisfactory interpreter 
and then an adequate critic. “There is not enough sympathetic 
penetration, at least at this point; and mental, and even spiritual, 
power, richly as his book is endowed with both, do not make 
up for that lack. He sees negatives in the positions of others 
which they would deny, or of which they would give a different 
description. ‘The positive in his own position which he knows at 
first-hand is of very high religious value. 


THE ATONEMENT 
BY KENNETH E. KIRK 


CONTENTS 


I. Tue PropLemM or THE DEATH oF CHRIST 


; : 246 
II. Irs Necessiry FoR SALVATION . ; : : <1 zie 
III. Irs Function as an Example . ; , : Realy) 
IV. Criticism or Exemprarist THEORIES . ; BOE 


V. Tue ResurrecTION THE GUARANTEE OF THE ATONEMENT 259 


VI. Curist’s Deatu THE Price oF SIN . : ue OZ 

VII. Tue VocapuLary oF THE ATONEMENT : : ~ ra270 
ee 

Nore A.—Exemprarist "THEORIES OF THE ATONEMENT . eerie 

Note B.—Dr. Moserty’s "THEory oF THE ATONEMENT e276 


Notre C.—TuHe Term ‘* SATISFACTION ”? AS APPLIED TO THE DEATH 


: s j eho 7G 


OF CHRIST : , : 


J 


Tur PRoBLEM OF THE DEATH OF CHRIST 


Ex ore infantium . . . The Catholic theory of the Atone- 
ment, with all its affirmations, its reticences, its possibilities of 
diverse interpretation, its consequent or collateral problems, is stated 
more clearly perhaps in three verses of the children’s hymn than 
in any other document. “Taking them as a starting-point, we 
shall have an opportunity of gathering, first, the affirmations in 
which all Christians are agreed; then those to which Catholic 
theology is more firmly wedded than other modes of Christian 
thought ; finally the problems which are raised by the con- 
trast between Catholic affirmation and non-Catholic doubt or 
silence. 


He died that we might be forgiven, 
He died to make us good, 

That we might go at length to heaven, 
Saved by His precious blood. 


There was no other good enough 
To pay the price of sin, 

He only could unlock the gate 
Of heaven, and let us in. 


Oh dearly, dearly has He loved, 
And we must love Him too, 

And trust in His redeeming blood, 
And try His work to do. 


“He died that...” Christ’s death is central in Christian 
thought. Christ’s submission to death was purposive. On these 
two points there is substantial agreement between all types of 
Christian thought. Ay it is central, or with what purpose He 
submitted to it, is the question which it is the object of this essay 
to consider. It suffices at the moment to say that those who 
would hush reason to silence at this point, and let loving faith 


20 The Atonement 


dwell on the mystery without seeking to pierce its truth or meaning, 
ignore the God-given desire to know and understand which is the 
inheritance of every thoughtful man. “Thought must go on till 
it is checked by the failure of its own powers : it admits no other 
or more artificial barriers. 

The problem, therefore, of the purpose of the Lord’s accept- 
ance of death, or (in other words) of the manner of the Atonement, 
cannot be evaded. We must notice, however, a tendency among 
Christians, particularly of the present day, to take “death” as a 
mere paraphase or metaphor for “life.” “To them it would be 
the same or almost the same if our hymn ran— 


He /ived that we might be forgiven, 
He /ived to make us good, 

‘That we might go at length to heaven, 
saved by His precious /ove. 


The death of Christ, appealing, arresting though it is, is in 
their view no more than the focus of His life—* it only added 
a crowning illustration of the ethical principle which ran through 
all His teaching.” + “There was no absolute need for the cross 
and passion, nor anything new contributed by them; they have 
no “ exclusive efiicacy ”’ 2; they are simply accessories introduced 
by the cruelty of circumstance. “They point the moral, no doubt ; 
but in strict thought they do no more than adorn the tale. If (as 
some of Athanasius’s opponents urged) Christ had lived the same 
life of purity, self-denial and love, but passed away in a quiet and 
honourable old age, the dramatic appeal would have been less (for 
“no other way of ending the earthly life could so fully embody or 
symbolize the fundamental thought of Christianity that God is 
love ’’),® but the atoning effect the same. “lo such a conception 
our hymn, as it stands, offers no obstacles ; yet the divergence from 
traditional Christianity and from the New ‘Testament writers is 
really extreme. We must, at some stage of our argument, face 
the question : If the death or “ blood ”’ of Christ saves, does it do so 
merely as summarising in itself the message and purpose of His life 
which is the true medium of salvation ; or does it contribute some- 


1H. Rashdall, Idea of Atonement, p. 46. 
2 Rashdall, op. czt. p. 149. 
3 Rashdall, op. cit. p. 361. 


Its Necessity for Salvation 251 


thing to our salvation which His earthly Incarnation, had it ended 
in any other way, would not have secured to us? Is His death, 
and that the death on the cross, a sine qud non of salvation ; or no 
more than an appropriate but not strictly necessary conclusion 


of His life ? 


Il 


Irs NECESSITY FOR SALVATION 


99 


“There was no other good enough . . . ‘He only could 
unlock...” Here there can be little explicit + disagreement. 
Even though some writers use language which suggests that 
(given Christ’s /ife on earth) His death wasa mercy strictly speaking 
superfluous, vouchsafed to men by the abundant love of God to 
point the moral of His life, few would go so far as openly to allege 
that the life itself was, in the same strict sense, superfluous. ‘This 
would involvea belief that man can save himself (whatever 1s meant 
by salvation) if he only bestirs himself sufficiently ; and that the 
Incarnation was a divine gift which no doubt makes it easier for 
us to bestir ourselves, but with which the most saintly and noble 
souls can dispense. Such a theory we can unhesitatingly reject. 
No coherent body of Christian thought has ever consciously 
regarded the incarnate life of Christ as a mere luxury, easing the 
moral man’s path to perfection indeed, but in no way making that 
path practicable for the first time. If man had not sinned, perhaps, 
it might have been so ;_ but since sin entered in, we have “ no power 
of ourselves to help ourselves”? ; our sufficiency—if ever we 
attain to sufficiency—is “ of God,” and of God “ through Christ 
alone.” 

As to this necessity of an atonement, however, different 
minds will be impressed by different arguments. The point is one 
to which we must recur 2 ; at the moment we need do no more than 
establish its inherent probability. “Vhat probability depends upon 
a doctrine which clearly dominates St. Paul, that sin and circum- 
stance are inextricably allied as forces from which man longs for 


1 The words “explicit,” “openly,” “ consciously,’ are used in this paragraph 
because, in the writer’s opinion, the theory he has ventured to call «¢exemplarist ”” 
involves an implicit though probably unconscious denial of the position here 
stated. See further, Note A, fin. p. 276. 

2 Infra, pp. 267-270. 


22 The Atonement 


deliverance. “Sin,” to the apostle, is a force hostile to God and 
goodness permeating all life and nature, and manifesting its power at 
every point. ‘“l’o adopt the words of another New ‘Testament 
writer, here is an enemy or a combination of enemies, in fear of 
which every man goes “all the days of his life.” 1 He may have 
little sense of moral sterility within himself—anzd it is in this respect, 
no doubt, that the “ sense of sin” most fully manifests itself ; but he 
is conscious of an environment full of menaces, dangers, and hidden 
possibilities, all of them potent enough to destroy in a moment the 
work of his hands, and to reduce his efforts and aspirations to a 
cipher. Against such an environment he sees himself to be in fact 
powerless ; though it tolerate and even further his activities for 
the time, he cannot tell at what moment it may turn against him 
and overwhelm his work in disaster. From all such dread of 
circumstance he needs—and indeed, if he be a man of any sensi- 
bilities at all, he desires—“ salvation,” and he feels himself to be 
incapable of finding it spontaneously. He may not see in Christ 
his Saviour; but at least he says, “‘ There is none other good 
enough.” , 

‘This deep-rooted disorganisation of the universe, investing 
all man’s efforts with pain and threatening them with annihila- 
tion, of which every serious-minded man is conscious and from 
which he must naturally seek deliverance, is presented in the 
early chapters of Genesis as the consequence or punishment of 
sin. If the invariable imminence of death be taken as its most 
obvious symbol, then St. Paul is found to be in complete agreement ; 
death is the wages of sin. Sucha representation of the dependence 
of physical upon moral disorganisation is not without its difficulties 
—death and disaster appear to have been laws of nature at epochs 
before conscious morality or immorality were possible. Yet 


there is a connection between the physical and the moral in this 


matter so intimate and unbreakable that to apply the name “sin” 
to both, and to recognise both together as that from which man 
needs to be saved, is wholly warranted. “That connection shows 
itself in two respects at least. (i) As we have said, sin and circum- 
stance combine to frustrate, or threaten with frustration, all man’s 
hopes and efforts; they form thus an unholy alliance, or con- 
spiracy, against him, so intimate that one name fitly covers both. 
(11) Without a change of moral attitude (a “‘ salvation ” from “ sin ” 


slellmiiie ey 3 Rom.ivi. 245 


a . 


Its Necessity for Salvation 253 


in the narrower sense) no change in man’s environment could 
make him happier, or better, or more confident of the future, 7.e. 
could “save”? him from “sin” in the wider sense. He might be 
assured that Nature would further his every effort and crown him 
with length of days, but reflection would still convince him that 
his own moral deficiencies might bring disasters more bitter than 
Nature’s worst ; health, prosperity, rank, reputation avail nothing 
to lighten the burden of sin upon a cuilty soul. Escape from 
circumstance would be valueless except to those who could also 
escape from sin. ‘To equate the idea of ‘salvation’ with any- 
thing less than “ full personal righteousness ” is not merely—as 
Dr. Moberly so fairly pointed out +—"a pagan rather than a 
Christian ” thought ; it is also a thought in itself futile and doomed 
to disillusionment. 

Scripture has good grounds, therefore, for regarding sin and 
circumstance together as an alliance of enemies from which man 
needs deliverance. And it is just this fact of the alliance between 
physical and spiritual menace which makes it so natural for us 
to assert that man cannot “‘save” himself. Were our enemies 
spiritual only, we might not be able to prove that man is so debased 
in moral capacity as to be unable, unaided, victoriously to meet 
them. But they are physical, or cosmical, as well. ‘This, on 
the one hand, enhances the demand for moral effort, for a new 
moral outlook to make man master of his fate and captain of his 
soul; on the other it threatens all such effort with futility. Of 
what avail will be self-sacrifice, devotion to the cause of others, 
patience, courage, endurance when all but hope is gone, if there 
is only one event to the good and the wicked, if man is no more 
than dust, and to dust must return? “ Salvation ”—at the very 
least—demands not merely that new moral outlook of which we 
have spoken, but also the assurance that Christian fortitude must 
in the end triumph over all the powers of cosmic evil 5 that the 
gates of hell cannot prevail against it. And such an assurance the 
experience of human life does not seem to give, The grave is still 
the inevitable termination of all our hopes. “There is a further 
aspect of this corporate or cosmical character of sin, to which we 
shall come. But even the aspect just suggested is enough for our 
present purpose. We are forced to the conclusion that man 
cannot save himself ;—that, apart from Christ, there can be “ none 


1 R. C. Moberly, Atonement and Personality, p. 72. 


254 The Atonement 


other good enough ” to overcome that combination of spiritual and 
physical enemies which St. Paul personifies as Sin. 


LU 
Its FUNCTION AS AN EXAMPLE 


“Oh dearly, dearly has He loved, and we must love Him too.”’ 
Here again all are, almost without exception, agreed. ‘The life 
and death of Christ (whether the death stands by itself in purpose, 
or is simply the appropriate consummation of the life) constitute 
an example which calls for human imitation within the measure 
and limits of human capacity ; whose call, moreover, is of infinite 
power in inspiring men to a new and devoted service of God 
and their fellows. Whatever other benefits may have been 
secured for us by this mystery which we call the Atonement, one 
benefit was not secured, offered, or intended—that man should 
be saved without any contributory effort of his own will towards 
good. Phrases have been used by Christian thinkers which some- 
times can be distorted into this latter meaning, as of the sacraments, 
so of the death of Christ. But no responsible theologian would 
ever have accepted the implication. Some indeed might be so 
full of the thought of “‘ grace” or “communion” as the means 
of holiness (whether mediated by the sacraments, or given apart 
from visible channels in response to the appeal of naked faith ; 
and whether, again, thought of primarily as a moralising force, 
or as a force lifting man into a realm far transcending all moral 
distinctions) as to suggest that man’s efforts should primarily be 
directed, not to the imitation of Christ, but to the pursuit of 
“ grace ’——“ grace” itself, on some theories, being thought of as 
attainable on conditions other than those of a constant striving after 
moral excellence.t But even so, it would be admitted by all except 
the most extreme, that zf in the “ state”’ or “life” of grace moral 
problems arose demanding a “‘ yes or no” answer—problems of 
theMorms sVittstrudoatiis fnvor aa, May I do that ? the life 
and death of Christ must form a final test or standard by which to 
measure the rightness or wrongness of the action contemplated. 
As an example, that life and death can be neither surpassed nor 


1 For the exaggerated teaching of Luther in these directions see H. Rashdall, 
Idea of Atonement, pp. 401-409. 


Criticism of Exemplarist Theories ss 


ignored. At the very least they mark out a path from which we 
deviate at our peril. At the most they constitute a challenge 
which, in the last event, no human will, unless far advanced on 
the road to perdition, can disregard. And to all the world they 
present, as realised in actual history, the picture of an ideal which 
few would not be glad to have constantly before their eyes, to keep 
their efforts from flagging and their hope from extinction. 


lV 
CrrricisM OF EXEMPLARIST “THEORIES 


So far all ways have lain together. ‘Theologians of every 
shade of thought travel in company. “The landmarks they have 
passed are these : (2) No man can save himself ; (4) the life of 
Christ Incarnate was therefore essential to man’s salvation, though 
its significance hitherto has mainly been found to lie in the fact 
that it makes the one appeal without which humanity could never 
have raised itself far out of the slough of sin; (c) the death of 
Christ, even though no more than the appropriate consummation 
of the life, was so appropriate that it may, symbolically at all 
events, be regarded as itself necessary also. Butat this point many 
theologians halt. No more (according to them) is required by 
man, no more has been given by God ; the example of Christ’s 
suffering and obedience is all-sufficient. 

Theories which go so far and no further have been designated 
by two names, equally question-begging ;_ their upholders call 
them “ethical,” their opponents “‘subjective.”+ “Ethical,” of 
course, they are, and “ subjective ” also, in the best senses of those 
much-abused words—that is to say, they demand of the human 
subject an ethical or moral effort towards righteousness. But, 
in this respect, all genuinely Christian theories are ethical and 
subjective. Nor can it even be said that the type of theory we 
have under consideration is necessarily more ethical or subjective 
than any other ; that depends entirely upon the degree of effective- 
ness with which the interpreter endows the example of Christ, 
which (as we have seen) is the only lever of salvation recognised 
bythetheory. Ifhesays (as for the theory’s sake alone he might be 


1 Though Dr. Rashdall constantly uses the word ‘‘ subjective” of his own 
theory with approval. 


256 The Atonement 


induced to say) that the moral appeal of the death of Christ is so 
overwhelming that no reasonable man can resist it, his theory — 
partakes to an almost unlimited extent of the “ unethical” or 
‘objective’ character which he deprecates in, or which his 
opponents claim for, the fuller theories to which we are to come. 
Heis saying in effect: “The lion hath roared, who will not tremble; 
the Lord God hath spoken, who will not prophesy ? ”—“‘ Christ’s 
death makes such an appeal to all that is best in human nature that 
only the insensate can remain unmoved ; all others must rise up 
from sin in the desire to imitate.” ‘The analogies on which the 
theory rests are just those instances in which the example of one 
human personality removes out of another’s path stumbling- 
blocks which hitherto- have remained insuperable. A single 
hero may, by the stimulus of example, turn a craven rabble into a 
band of heroes like-hearted with himself ; and under that stimulus 
they can and do perform—with ease and without reflection upon 
the cost—acts of valour which at an earlier stage appeared entirely 
impossible. ‘Their efforts, no doubt, are still voluntary and 
conscious (and therefore “ethical”? and “subjective’’), but so 
inspired by the example and magnetism of a great personality that 
they have ceased to be “ efforts ” in any ordinary sense of the word. 
The leader has lent his followers his own strength and daring. 
‘They are themselves and yet other than themselves ; or—we 
may say——they are their real selves at last, and no longer the 
cowards they appeared to be. 

Here is a theory of the Atonement at once comprehensible, 
admirable and inspiring—one, moreover, without doubt true to life; 
but the more the influence of Christ’s example is emphasised, 
the more He is thought of as lending His followers His strength, 
the less can it be called “subjective,” or ‘‘ ethical” either, in 
any sense in which emphasis is laid upon the efforts of the Christian 
to imitate. If we must have a name for theories of this type, 
let us choose a non-committal term and call them “ exemplarist ”°— 
because their emphasis is upon the moral value of Christ’s example. 
Terms such as “ethical” or “subjective” simply confuse the 
issue 3 they suggest either that partisans of the theory claim too 


1 £.g. the “‘ leader of men,” Rashdall, op. cit. p. 43; cf. p. st—our Lord 
thought of His death “‘ as a kind of service which His disciples ought to imitate.” 
As a matter of fact, and naturally enough, few exemplarist writers emphasise 
this “ objective ” aspect of their doctrine. Cf. p. 257, note. 


Criticism of Exemplarist Theories 257 


much for it, or that opponents attack it at points where it is not 
necessarily assailable. 

The “exemplarist”” theory is not therefore, at first sight, 
either unworthy or unchristian. It is indeed a part, and a 
vital part, of every theory that can be called Christian. It 
might even be urged that it exhausts the data of Scripture, and is 
wholly adequate to the needs of man. But brief consideration 
will show that, whether it be the only truth derivable from reflection 
upon the death of Christ or no, its adequacy is a very different 
question. “The example of Christ, we are told, appeals to love and 
will; and so it does. But it does so, except in the case of His 
historical contemporaries, indirectly and at not one but many 
removes. It appeals to love and will only by way of imagina- 
tion; the mind which cannot visualise the life and death of 
Christ, as an example of self-sacrificing devotion, must go un- 
touched. And imagination is a weak, fickle and erratic servant ; 
if we are to depend upon f¢Azs for our salvation our chances are 
tenuous at best. In the long run, therefore, exemplarism holds 
out little hope to the ordinary man. ‘The will, as we know, we 
can to some degree command, even in our state enfeebled by 
sin. But imagination and emotions are our servants only to a far 
slighter degree ; if the dedication of the will is to depend upon a 
prior captivity of emotion and imagination, our state is precarious 
indeed. 

This criticism might perhaps be met by the addition to the 
theory of a doctrine of objective grace, to be won on such conditions 
that not even the most unimaginative soul would stand at a dis- 
advantage as regards salvation !—and such indeed is the character 
assigned to grace in traditional Christian thought. But few 
exemplarist theologians seem disposed to make this addition. “The 
cause of their reluctance does not concern us here ; it is connected 
with a shrinking from the objectively supernatural in general, 
characteristic of much modern thought. But the absence of any 
such doctrine of grace in exemplarism marks the theory out not 
only as inadequate to human needs, but also as profoundly in- 
equitable. On the exemplarist theory, those will benefit most 


3 


1 Such a theory, on strictly exemplarist lines, is involved in that “‘ objective’ 
aspect of exemplarism to which we alluded on the preceding page. But to 
adopt it would be to introduce an element of objectivity as aggressive as any 
contained in the traditional doctrines of grace. It is for this reason that 
exemplarists as a whole ignore the interpretations we have suggested. 


258 The Atonement 


by the example of Christ, ceteris partbus, who are most highly 
endowed with the capacity for emotional or imaginative quicken- 
ing. Less moral effort will be required of them than of others 
of more stolid natures. In some cases, indeed, the force of 
example playing upon imagination and emotions will be so 
potent that a minimum of conscious moral effort will serve, 
when aided by this influence, to achieve results which in 
other natures, less richly endowed, even heroic struggles may 
fail to reach. ‘The traditional theories, whatever form they take, 
all assume as a fundamental proposition something which 
common sense and Christian sentiment alike endorse—that (in the 
measure in which man is called upon to co-operate with God 
and grace in his salvation) the greater the moral effort the greater 
the certainty, if not the degree, of achievement. ‘This plain 
and obvious piece of natural justice exemplarism sets aside ; it 
makes attainment depend primarily not upon moral efforts for 
which the man is consciously responsible, but upon accidents of 
heredity for which he can claim no merit. ‘The theory is not 
merely /ess ethical than traditional Catholicism ; it is even 
more unethical and arbitrary than any but the most absolute 
Predestinarianism. + 

Finally, the insufficiency of mere exemplarism Is shown once 
more by the fact that it does not, in itself, provide any hope against 
that complete disorganisation of the universe which we have seen to 
be comprehended under the title of “sin.” The moral appeal 
of the character of Christ is infinite and compelling ; but what 
guarantee does it give of a successful issue to the struggle? “The 
universe conspired to drive Him to the cross and to a forgotten 
grave ; was not this total failure? ‘There is still one event to 
the good as to the evil ; “vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” “The 
Christian is forced to proclaim the victory of his Master’s earthly 
life by appealing to the truth of the resurrection ; and once that 
appeal is made, exemplarism, whilst never losing its elements of truth 
and final value, is forced into a secondary position, New factors 
come into view which wholly change the balance of doctrine : 
factors which traditional Christianity has always placed in the 
forefront of the scheme, though the exemplarist, by the very 
urgency with which he advocates the essentials of his own theory, 


1 For a possible reply to this argument, and further discussion, see Note A, 
‘‘ Exemplarist Theories of the Atonement,” at end of this essay. 


The Resurrection the Guarantee 259 


is compelled to give them little attention, if not wholly to ignore 
them.! What these are we must briefly consider before passing to 
the central affirmation of Catholic doctrine. 


Vv 
Tur RESURRECTION THE GUARANTEE OF THE ATONEMENT 


“He only could unlock the gate of heaven, and let us ines 
We must add then to the inspiration of the example of Christ 
the guarantee of ultimate victory over all the powers of evil, of 
disorganisation, of the malignancy of circumstance, given by 
the resurrection of Christ. Our primary emphasis will no longer 
be upon the heroism with which He struggled against the powers 
of evil, but upon the manifest victory with which the struggle was 
crowned. St. Paul in various passages arrays the army of forces 
against which the Christian has to fight, or from which he desires 
deliverance; in other passages he is meticulously careful to 
show that each of these forces has been severally and individually 
conquered by Christ—robbed of its sting 5 stripped of its power 5 
nailed to the cross; made a mockery.? Similarly he never tires 
of speaking of the “ redemption ” won for us, as though we were 
prisoners emancipated from captivity or slaves bought back into 
freedom in the market-place. "The meaning of all this is trans- 
cendently clear. “The resurrection and ascension of Christ, above 
all if taken in connection with the doctrine of the Holy Spirit as the 
agent through whom man accepts and makes his own the obedience 
which was in Christ, guarantee as a certainty what the world had 
always groped after as a pious aspiration. ‘The ills of this life, 
against which a moral revelation of character would indeed 
strengthen us to endure (though only transcendent faith would 
enable us to believe the endurance to be more than a noble but 
quixotic vanity), will come one day to an end for the moral man. 


1 This point is noticed in regard to Abailard by Canon Storr, Problem of 
the Cross, p. 132. 

2 Soof “sin,” Rom. vill. 3; “death,” 1 Cor. xv. 54; the “law,” Rom. x. 4, 
Gal. iii. 25, Eph. ii. 15 3 cp. Col. ii. 14; the “ curse,” Gal. i11. 13; the “present 
evil world,” Gal. i. 4; the “ powers of darkness,” Col. il. 15 ; ete. 

3 AvtTe0G0aLand compounds, Rom: ili. 24, Vill. 23; 1 Cor.i. 30; Eph.i. 7, 
iv. 30; Col. i. 143 1 Tim. ii. 6; Tit. i. 14 ; a&yoepdeo0a. and compounds, 
1 Cor. vi. 20, Vii. 23 3 Gal. iil. 13, IV. 5. 


260 The Atonement 


His struggles shall usher him into a glorious immortality of body as 
well as soul, where there shall be no more crying nor any pain, and 
God shall wipe away all tears from his eyes. Redemption, won by 
the cross, is guaranteed by the resurrection ; and for the righteous, 
at least, it shall be redemption not merely from temptation and the 
sinfulness of the flesh, but also from all the disorganisation and 
hostility of the universe. For him at least there shall bea new 
heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth are 
passed away. St. Paul goes further, and ina mystic passage suggests 
that the whole universe, inanimate as well as animate, shall be 
relieved from a condition so terrible that it can be described only 
as a “‘ universal moaning in pain.” 1 

Is such a consummation guaranteed by the resurrection of 
Christ ? “The question, properly, belongs to other chapters of 
this book, but two points may be noticed here. (i) The advantage 
of a doctrinal position which emphasises not merely the example of 
Christ’s life and death dut also the guarantee of His resurrection, 
over any theory which concentrates solely upon the example, is 
independent of any theory of grace, sacramental or otherwise, 
which may be taken into account. Its superiority stands assured 
even though no doctrine of the agency of the Holy Spirit be 
added to it. We are for the moment considering questions 
merely of example and guarantee—questions, that is, of purely 
‘natural ”? influences, into which “* supernatural ” considerations 
do not enter at all. If“ grace” and “ the Spirit” be thought of as 
no more than summary terms to describe natural operations such 
as these—and in this manner, it may be conjectured, do most 
exemplarists conceive of them—we shall indeed have little enough 
comfort to offer to the sick soul ; but even so it remains true that 
a guarantee of victory as well as an example of heroism is a greater 
gift, or act of “ grace,” than the example taken solely by itself 
could be. Our contention that no doctrine of the atonement is 
complete apart from explicit emphasis upon the Lord’s resur- 
rection 1s independent therefore of any controversy as to, let us say, 
the personality of the Spirit, or the character or means of grace ; it 
can be considered (as the preceding paragraphs have considered it) 
on its own merits alone. 

(11) It gives to the death of Christ, and in particular to the 
special circumstance of tragedy with which it was surrounded, 


1 Rom. viil. 22. 





The Resurrection the Guarantee 261 


exactly that unique significance which we have seen that 
Catholic theology has always attributed to it. A tiny example 
may inspire, in others, efforts altogether out of proportion to itself 
in magnitude ; but the adequacy of a guarantee always depends 
upon an a fortiori argument. The example of the spider inspired, 
no doubt, in Robert Bruce heroism far greater than that which 
the spider itself manifested ; but it could give him no guarantee 
of victory, because the obstacles which the insect overcame were 
not demonstrably more serious than those which confronted the 
patriot. He might reasonably have argued: ‘The example 
of this persevering animal is no doubt highly laudable, but what 
evidence does it give me that a renewal of my efforts will not be 
crowned with disasters even greater than the present one?” “The 
example was adequate ; the guarantee insufficient. 

But the resurrection of Christ does give a guarantee ; and 
where it is combined with a doctrine of grace which puts the assist- 
ance of the Spirit of God within the reach even of the most un- 
imaginative man, we may fairly urge that the guarantee is one 
of triumph over every conceivable obstacle. “The guarantee is 
sufficient, precisely because the death of Christ was attended by 
every circumstance which could conceivably add completeness to 
the apparent defeat sustained in it. The treachery of a familiar 
friend ; the cowardice and flight of all who were most bound to 
stand their ground ; the wo/te-face of a multitude demanding to-day 
the crucifixion of Him whom yesterday they claimed as King ; the 
uprising of the leaders of religion against one whose only concern is 
with religious integrity and ideals ; the failure of a justice which, by 
its very indifference to purely national and sectarian interests, might 
reasonably be supposed impartial ; even the deliberate refusal of 
the Sufferer Himself to call upon the legions of angels who only 
waited His summons to intervene ;—these, far more than any 
physical pangs, constitute the real tragedy of the crucifixion. ‘These 
too, to every sensitive mind, exhibit in their highest degree the cruel 
refinements of that adverse circumstance which it is the aspiration 
of Christian virtue to conquer and transcend. ‘The death of 
Socrates is often quoted as a parallel to the crucifixion of our Lord ; 
in effect it provides, not a parallel, but a glaring contrast, which only 
enhances the offence of the cross. Beyond a combination of 
events such as those which culminated in Calvary, the mind can 
scarcely picture anything more terrible ; and therefore the resur- 


262 The Atonement 


rection of the Lord is a guarantee that the tyranny of circumstance 
is not eternal and unconquerable, just because it is a resurrection 
following upon such a death and not upon one less unnatural or 
cruel. It is for this reason that He is able to help to the uttermost 
them that call upon Him. 

We have reached a second halting-place. Here again many 
theologians are content to rest in their exposition of what is called 
the doctrine of the Atonement. ‘The death and resurrection of 
Christ are not merely an example of righteousness, but a guarantee 
that the righteous man who sets himself in the way of salvation 
(at least if this be thought of as a life ennobled and strengthened by 
grace) may triumph over every temptation, hindrance, or power that 
sin and circumstance can array against him. But our hymn carries 
us further still ; it proclaims that there is yet another factor in man’s 
degradation and weakness of which we have taken no account ; 
but that the Lord took account of it, and provided by His death a 
remedy. 


Vi 


Curist’s DEATH THE PRICE OF SIN 


‘“‘ He died that we might be forgiven . . . to pay the price 
of sin.” It is of phrases such as these that Catholic thought finds 
itself most called upon to offer an explanation. We may dismiss at 
once any explanation which leans to the suggestion that a ransom 
had to be paid to the devil to rescue man from his clutches ; or 
that God demanded a victim—any victim, but still a victim—on 
whom to wreak vengeance for man’s sin—“‘as if God did, accord- 
ing to the manner of corrupt judges, take so much money” 
(it matters not from whom) “ to abate so much in the punishment 
of malefactors.”” 1 It need scarcely be pointed out that theories of 
this kind find no support in the New Testament. ‘They have at 
times no doubt been popular in Christian thought, and their 
popularity has left marks upon Catholic language which may some- 
times prove misleading ; but we must distinguish between such 
mere phrase-survivals and the deeper and truer thought to which, 
by a not unnatural transition, they have become attached. 

Put in its simplest form, that thought is something as follows. 
The benefits of the death of Christ to which we have so far alluded 


1 R. Hooker, Eccles. Polity, vi. 5. 


The Price of Sin 263 


are all directed towards enabling man, as we may say, to ‘** turn over 
a new leaf,” to adopt a new and nobler attitude for the future 
towards both temptation within and adverse circumstance with- 
out. Yet if a sinner were so to lay hold upon grace and turn from 
sin without any allusion to, or apparent recognition of, his past 
offences, we should all rejoice, no doubt, at the result ; but equally 
we should all feel that something demanded by the circumstances 
of the case remained unsatisfied. ‘‘ An improved attitude on the 
part of men to the law, a moral re-identification with it, 1s not 
sufficient ; for the temporal future cannot meet the demands of 
the temporal past.” “* Afterward he repented and went”? is 
without doubt a better conclusion to the story of the elder 
brother in the parable than “he went not” to the story of the 
younger, and the word repented” may cover a multitude of 
acts of reparation. But if we take the story at its face value we 
cannot resist the conviction that the elder brother was something 
ofa boor. He had refused his father’s request, and that abruptly 
and insolently ; and though his subsequent repentance cancelled, 
in a sense, the original refusal, the abruptness and insolence must 
have created an atmosphere of mutual tension which it would take 
more than the formal obedience of the mood of penitence to 
dispel. Some kind of apology, acknowledgment. or recognition 
of the intentional and uncalled-for offence offered to the father 
would have gone far to restore the family relationship which the 
son’s perversity had subjected to so severe a strain. ‘‘ Afterward 
he went”? is no doubt a technical expiation of “I go not” ; 
but a sullen “‘ going,” without apology, could hardly restore the 
original harmonious relationship to which the father appealed 
with his courteous “Son, go labour to-day in my vineyard.” ‘The 
offence was a slight one, and no more than a mere apology was 
needed ; yet, as the story stands, the elder brother’s repentance 
seems less adequate to the circumstance than that of another son, 
of whom it was said, ‘“ He fell at his father’s feet saying, Father, 
I have sinned against heaven and before thee se 

Where offence has been offered, therefore, a mere cessation 
of the offence does not restore the original relationship which 
existed before the offence. Even a complete reversal of be- 
haviour can scarcely be thought to sufhice, though it comes 


1 J. K. Mozley, Doctrine of the Atonement, p. 210 5 cf. Augustine, Serm. 351 
(ed. Ben.) ; Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, Poet 


264 The Atonement 


nearer to sufficiency. Something more is demanded—some- 
thing in which the offender explicitly acknowledges his fault 
and asks for forgiveness and restoration, even though he knows 
that forgiveness and restoration are his without the asking. But 
when we come to say what it is which demands this reparation 
for the past, our limited knowledge of eternal truth makes it 
dificult to give an answer. Phrases have been multiplied to 
express the source of the demand. “‘God’s offended majesty,” 
‘“God’s holiness,” “natural justice,” the “craving of the soul 
for expiation,” ‘‘ the constitution of the universe as a moral 
order,” all suggest the truth, yet we hesitate to say that any one 
of them expresses it fully. Perhaps we can dono more than borrow 
a theological term popular in many other connections; it is 
TpeTtoy, conventens, “fit”? that the past be explicitly acknow- 
ledged in this way, before we turn to the future with its hoped- 
for newness of life. Such reparation is a part of the ‘ natural 
fitness ’’ of things. 

It may indeed be alleged that in employing the phrase “‘ the 
demand of natural fitness” rather than, let us say, the “* demand 
of God’s holiness,” we have availed ourselves of a facile euphemism 
to evade a real difficulty. Such an objection would be true 
enough if the substitution involved any suggestion that the ideal 
demands of nature did not coincide with the demands of God ; 
to contrast God and nature in this way would reduce theology to 
confusion. In common fairness it must be admitted that 
‘“ natural fitness’ and “ divine decree ’? do mean the same thing ; 
and that the necessity for what we have called explicit recognition 
of past sin is to our mind of divine institution. Nevertheless, 
something is gained, in this connection, by using the name of 
“nature” rather than that of “God.” For to say that God 
‘““demands”’ such and such things involves, in much modern 
anthropomorphic and unphilosophical thought about God, the 

1 A similar criticism could with some plausibility be urged against 
Canon Storr’s theory that while the “‘ consequences of sin” (degeneration of 
character, etc.) may fitly be called “‘ the divine reactions against our sinning, 
expressed in the laws of the universe ” (Problem of the Cross, p. 86), they can not 
be described as “‘ the direct, personal acts of God” (ib. p. 84). It is difficult to 
see what is gained by this delicate distinction—or indeed whether it is a real 
distinction at all. At best it marks a difference between two modes of divine 
action—on the one hand, antecedent legislation ; on the other, ad hoc inter- 


vention. But this difference does not affect in any way the real question, which 
is simply, “‘ Are the ‘ consequences ’ of sin of divine ordinance or not ?” 


~ 


The Price of Sin 265 


attribution to Him of characteristics at once tyrannical and 
pedantic :—tyrannical, because it suggests that He selects, of 
his own unfettered choice, conditions which He then imposes 
upon man as necessary preliminaries to salvation ; pedantic, 
because it might be inferred that, once He had laid down the law, 
He suffered not the slightest deviation from it to go unpunished 
whatever extenuation could be pleaded. Until Christian thought 
has wholly emancipated itself from the possibility of interpreting 
God’s “ demands,” ‘‘ decrees,” or “* laws ”’ in an unnatural and 
unethical sense, it is wiser perhaps, and certainly safer, if we 
wish to argue the essential morality of a principle such as that of 
acknowledgment of sin, to base the argument upon phrases whose 
appropriateness and cogency all will recognise, rather than upon 
others which, though just in themselves, are at the moment liable 
to misinterpretation. When Christendom regains its appreciation 
of exact theology it will be possible to say plainly : “‘ God, in no 
arbitrary or vindictive spirit, calls for acknowledgment of past sin 
as a piece of natural justice” : and the conscience of man will 
recognise the essential truth of the statement without falling into 
the errors so common in modern thought.* 

At all events it is easy to show that some such idea as that 
which has been indicated underlay the whole Jewish system of 
sacrifice, crowned as it was by the final aspirations of the Day of 
Atonement. Other ideas were present no doubt—ideas which 
have an integral place in the scheme and which, like this one, 
have their own counterpart in Christian doctrine—ideas of 
Pammunion with God. ofsharing) in His nature. But the 
“covering” of sin by sacrifice, the offering of atonement, is a 
primary thought of the system. With a humility as deep as 
their sense of sin itself, the Jews believed that only unwitting 
offences could be atoned for in this way 5 for the ‘‘sin with a 
high hand” there was no known form of atonement. And 
with a like humility the greatest of their prophets invariably 
reminded them that the whole system of sacrifice could never be 


1 M. Riviére puts the argument of the above paragraph with inimitable 
precision and effect : ““ Nous ne prétons pas 4 Dieu, comme on nous en accuse, 
je ne sais quelle susceptibilite mesquine de grand seigneur piqué ; et la raison en 
est que l’honneur de Dieu n’est pas, a vrai dire, un droit personnel et comme une 
affirmation hautaine de sa supériorité : il se confond avec la loi de subordination 
nécessaire des étres, avec ce qu’on appelle parfois—d’un mot vague, mais juste— 
lordre des choses.” —J. Rivitre, Dogme de la Rédemption, p. 4- 


266 The Atonement 


regarded as adequate atonement for the past. Sacrifices were 
a symbol of penitence no doubt—an explicit recognition of sin 
before God—but in no way a substitute for that newness of life 
which He desired to see. And this introduces a consideration 
of primary importance. The function of sacrifice is wholly 
different from the function of newness of life ; the latter is the 
end after which man, by God’s grace, should strive ;_ the former 
a necessary preliminary as restoring, by the admission of wrong 
done, the condition of harmony making future sanctification 
possible. Sacrifice and conversion, therefore, are two separate 
acts in the restoration of man}; each has its distinct part to 
play. Only a debased mind will infer, from the necessity of 
sacrifice, that it can take the place of conversion; only a 
shallow mind, that conversion is adequate without sacrificial 
reparation. 

‘The fact that sacrifice to the prophetic mind appeared value- 
less unless accompanied by a genuine effort of contrition brings 
out a further truth of real importance—that the intrinsic cost 
of the sacrifice to the offerer is not in itself a condition of its 
reality or worth. It must not indeed be so valueless as to make 
it only another insult to the offended person; but because it is 
the explicit symbol of an implicit sense of sin rather than an act 
of legal restitution, appropriateness to the occasion rather than 
cost to the offerer should be its dominant characteristic. If we 
revert to the Parable of the Two Sons, we see that all that was 
required to restore the ruptured relationship was the utterance 
of a single sentence of regret. ‘‘ Restitution’ such as the cir- 
cumstances demanded was made by the work in the vineyard, 
it was the apology that was lacking. Without the restitution, 
indeed, the apology would have been an added insult ; without 
the apology the restitution was at best ungracious and inconsiderate. 
But to one genuinely intent on the restitution the apology could 
scarcely, in the case in question, have involved a great additional 
effort ; it is not so much the actual as the symbolic value of the 
sacrifice that makes it acceptable. From this it may further be 
inferred—and the inference is one of crucial importance—that, if 
A has no appropriate sacrifice of his own that he can bring to the 
altar, he can avail himself of, associate himself with, B’s offering ; 
if he is, for any reason, tongue-tied, another can speak the necessary 
words for him, provided only that he signifies his assent. Another’s 


The Price of Sin 78 


gift can still be offered validly, if the desire to offer sacrifice is there, 
and no other means avail. 

The importance of this conclusion for Christian theology 
becomes at once apparent. ‘To all who fail to find within them- 
selves adequate means for that expression of real contrition of 
which we have spoken, the Church offers her doctrine that the 
death of Christ is the divinely appointed means of help in this 
respect, as in those other respects which have been considered 
above. ‘‘ On the cross,” she says, “we see One wholly akin to 
ourselves offering a sinless life to the Father as representative 
for man. ‘here is no confession of sin on His lips, for He did 
no sin; otherwise His sacrifice would have been, in its measure, 
imperfect as ours have always been. And if we attribute to 
the Father the intent to give His only-begotten Son for the 
world’s salvation, we can scarcely be wrong in seeing in His 
death this purpose also, that man should be provided with an 
adequate sacrifice and symbol of penitence—a symbol sufficient 
to satisfy the demand of ‘natural justice’ or the ° fitness of 
things.’ ” 

That one who has no other means of adequate sacrifice at his 
disposal may associate himself with another’s offering we have 
already seen. ‘That the sacrifice of Christ is appropriate for this 
purpose need hardly be argued ; that it is adequate will scarcely be 
doubted by anyone who sees in Jesus the Son of God, of the essence 
of the Godhead, incarnate for the salvation of the world, “The 
only question that arises ‘s whether we can in all strictness call the 
death of Christ zecessary in this respect, as in those others in which 
its necessity has already been argued ; or rather, whether this 
aspect of the matter demonstrates that necessity for the death which 
our earlier arguments only led us—though with a high degree of 
cogency—to assume.+ Is man unable adequately to make an 
appropriate acknowledgment of hissin? Some will have no doubt 
on this point. * Christianity,” they will say, ““ gives us a doctrine 
of human depravity which renders it antecedently unlikely that any- 
one not far advanced in spiritual grace could appreciate the depths of 
sin into which he had fallen, and give his appreciation adequate ex- 
pression. Experience, again, teaches us that no acknowledgment 
of sin before God of which we are capable is wholly free from selfish 
sentiments and motives. It is mingled with wounded self-respect 


1 Supra, pp- 251-253» 


268 The Atonement 


and remorse for folly unbefitting the sinner’s fancied dignity ; it is 
not without unworthy hopes of a response of divine favour showing 
itself even in temporal benefits ; it is hypocritical, as promising 
in the moment of emotiona dedicated life which it knows it cannot 
guarantee.”” Confession of sin may be a higher thing than sacrifice ; 
but arguments such as these suggest that it can never on human lips 
be pure enough to satisfy that natural fitness of which we have 
spoken. 

‘Those who are convinced by these and similar lines of argu- 
ment will not hesitate to agree that ‘ some better sacrifice” than 
the blood of sheep and goats—better even than contrition of the 
heart and confession with the lips—was universally necessary ; and 
they will the more unhesitatingly and willingly accept the claims 
made by the Church for the death of Christ in this regard. Others, 
not so convinced, may believe themselves—theoretically at least — 
capable of such contrition and confession as is needed by the 
circumstances of their sin. Yet, even so, it is unthinkable that 
they should actually be content with any contrition they had 
exhibited or confession they had voiced. Contentment of such 
a kind would be of the very essence of self-righteousness ;_ it 
would indicate not sorrow for sin, but complete analgesia towards 
the real character of sin in the soul. If, then, there should be a 
genuinely spiritual man who said “I see the need for confession, 
but not the need for sacrifice as well,” he would never reject 
without examination any offer of help that might conceivably 
enable him to make his confession more adequate ; rather he 
would only reject such offered help if it proved either idle or 
immoral. Hemight indeed be less inclined to emphasise the necessity 
of Christ’s death in this respect. But, on the arguments hitherto 
advanced, he would not hesitate to attribute to it sacrificial 
character in the fullest measure. He would recognise the un- 
speakable gift of God which enabled him to say : “ Whether my 
own life, renewed as it is by the Spirit of God, is an adequate 
expression of sorrow for my past sins, I cannot say. But I know 
that some such expression was a necessary condition of my re- 
conciliation with my Father in Heaven; and my own attempts 
at expression, be they sufficient or otherwise, are infinitely en- 
hanced when I contemplate the cross and say ‘There, O Father, 
is the sacrifice I would have made if only I could. ‘There is 
the sinless life of obedience unto death which—if I could offer it— 


The Price of Sin 269 


would be a fitting reparation for the past. Accept, I pray, this 
sacrifice on my behalf. It is not mine ; yet by every grace given 
to me I associate myself with it, promising to mould my life upon 
that pattern not only for righteous service in the future, but also, 
and equally, as my open acknowledgment of grievous sin in 


the past.’ ”’ 
Yet even this consideration moves within too limited a circle 
of argument. “Sin,” as we have seen, involves a deep-rooted 


disorganisation of the universe, mysteriously bound up with human 
sin, yet infinitely more terrible than even the complete sum of all 
the sins that ever have been or can be committed. * Sin” is a 
corporate matter involving both animate and inanimate creation, 
and to the reflective mind even an endless offering of individual 
reparations would not suffice to repair the breach thus made 
between the creation and the Creator. Natural fitness, we may 
say, demands that human nature—if not universal nature too—shall 
in one symbolic corporate act express the conviction, shared by 
God and man alike, that sin is foreign to its ideal constitution. 
If the boorish son of the parable had been not one but fifty in 
number, individually and collectively offending against the father’s 
love, separate and private acts of reparation, however complete, 
would not have effected the necessary reconciliation. A con- 
spiracy can only be expiated by the corporate submission of the 
conspirators; ideal justice remains unsatisfied if they merely pass 
over, severally and one by one, to the side of the aggrieved. 
And whatever be the truth of the disorganisation of nature, it 
is clear that human sin partakes of this character of conspiracy. 
Men make an implicit compact not with Death and Hell alone, 
but with one another, to hold down the truth in unrighteousness, 
to connive at an outraged social order, to tolerate the inertia of 
selfishness, to prostitute the divine standard of purity to the debased 
usage of the world. Once we revert to the Pauline conception 
of the corporate character of sin, the absolute necessity for some 
such act as the death of Christ becomes transcendently clear. We 
are in a position to endorse the familiar statements that in Him 
humanity paid the price as a whole, and that He died as the 
Representative Man ; for it is only a soul preoccupied with the 
thought of “‘ my sin” to the exclusion of that of “sin” as a whole 
which can hesitate any more to confess that, without such an 
offering, the sacrifice demanded by natural fitness is still unoffered, 


270 The Atonement 


and salvation, which must at least involve full and final reconcilia- 
tion with the loving Father of all mankind, remains not merely 
dificult or doubtful of attainment, but completely and finally 
impossible, 1 


VII 
THe VocABULARY OF THE ATONEMENT 


‘There is no “‘ Catholic” doctrine of the Atonement in the 
sense in which, for example, there is a ‘‘ Catholic”? doctrine of 
the Incarnation. Conciliar definition has never asserted any one 
theory of the manner in which Christ’s death avails for the salva- 
tion of men. But the main stream of Christian thought has 
carried along with it certain definite phrases as applicable to the 
Atonement, and it is by reference to these that we may test what 
has been written above. ‘That, on the theory thus outlined, 
the death of Christ may with peculiar appropriateness be called a 
sacrifice is self-evident, and in this respect the test is wholly satisfied. 
That it provides expzation, or due acknowledgment, for the past 
sin of mankind, and so removes the obstacle on man’s side which 
impedes the resumption of harmonious relationship between man 
and God, we havealready argued ; thatit propitiates, or satisfies*— 
not, indeed, an arbitrary, angry, or tyrannical deity, but that natural 
fitness which is none the less a divine ordinance for being also an 
admitted demand of human reason, has been our main contention. 
similarly, there can be no doubt as to the description vicarious ; 
the death was offered by the divine Victim on man’s behalf, 
and, as we have argued, is available for man to identify himself 
therewith. ‘That it can fitly be called substitutionary is not, on 
the theory we have stated, very apparent ; but we have frankly 
to recognise that, whilst the New Testament constantly speaks 
of Christ suffering ‘on our behalf,” it very rarely indeed uses 
language suggesting that he suffered “in our stead” 3; and it may 
reasonably be supposed that such language crept into Christianity 
through an interpretation of Isaiah liii. which neither the author 

1 See further, infra, p. 276, Note B, ‘“ Dr. Moberly’s Theory of the Atone- 
ment.” 
2 See further, infra, p. 277, Note C, ‘‘ The Term ‘ Satisfaction ’ as applied 


to the Death of Christ.” 
3 Cf. Rashdall, of. cit. p. 93. 


The Vocabulary of the Atonement 271 


nor, for example, his Septuagint translators would for a moment 
have endorsed, or from a similar vulgarisation of the ritual of 
the Day of Atonement. 

We may pass on to a much more important problem, and that 
our last one : have we done sufficient justice to the undisputed fact 
that the death of Christ on the basis of New Testament evidence Is 
constantly spoken of as winning for us justification and forgiveness 
of sins ? 

This is scarcely the place for a detailed discussion of the meaning 
of St. Paul’s justification by faith. “Two facts, however, are sufhi- 
ciently clear: (i) that he discards the gospel phrase of forgive- 
ness whilst introducing and emphasising that of “ justification Bias 
(ii) that no amount of argument can rob the latter word of its 
primary forensic sense ; it is redolent of the Law.1 These facts 
are surprising and disturbing enough in all conscience. It would 
seem that the apostle of the Gentiles showed himself, at the central 
point of his gospel, more Jewish than the Jew, a Pharisee of 
the Pharisees in the worst sense; that he abandoned the free air 
of the new law for the bonds of Rabbinic legalism just at the point 
where such a lapse would prove most disastrous. ‘The motive 
may, indeed, have been mainly controversial—to prove to his 
opponents of that “ forgiveness’’ must be taken in the sense of 
“justification,” but rather that ‘justification’ could have no 
religious meaning unless set in a context of ‘“ forgiveness.” Yet 
even so it can hardly be denied that St. Paul perpetuated, in 
Christianity, a Jewish idea singularly difficult for the Gospel to 
assimilate with other elements as fully, or more fully, integral to 
tself—the idea of the “‘ wrath of God” from which man has to 
find “‘ justification” ; and that he added to it a conception which 
to many appears equally infelicitous—the conception, namely, that 
this wrath could be evaded, by the unrighteous, on the basis not so 
much ofa conversion to righteousness as on that of the appropriation 
of justification—a righteousness not of obvious fact but of 
apparent legal fiction—from another source. 

Yet we have to notice that he is not happy in his adoption 
of the phrase “the wrath of God’”’—he tends throughout to 


1 Je. “ to deem righteous.” Modern commentators are practically agreed 
on this point: W. L. Knox, St. Paul and the Church of Ferusalem, p. 117, 
and A. C. McGiffert, Christianity in the Apostolic Age, pp. 143, 144, are the 
principal dissentients. 


22 The Atonement 


avoid it and substitute an impersonal ‘‘wrath.”1 This tendency 
climinates—partially, if not entirely—one of our difficulties. We 
can interpret this “‘ wrath ”’ in the sense of that “‘ fitness of things ” 
or “natural justice” which demands of a sinner some overt 
recognition and abhorrence of his past sin. Such a recog- 
nition, as we have seen, is independent of ‘‘ newness of life,” 
fulfilling as it does a different function ; it can therefore avail 
itself, for its explicit self-expression, of the actions of another. So, 
too, St. Paul’s “‘justification ”’ is independent of ‘‘ newness of life,’ 
Ideally, sanctification follows it ; but St. Paul is clear that Chris- 
tians, already “‘justified,” will still have to answer ‘‘in the body” 
for their life after justification, and that an unsanctified life will 
not be able to evade condemnation by any appeal to precedent 
“justification.” That being so, the element of “ evasion by 
fiction” goes. Justification is far from being salvation ; it is 
just that acknowledgment of past offences without which 
salvation is impossible, but which does not in itself guarantee 
salvation. “The Jew, St. Paul suggests, had made his mistake in 
identifying justification with salvation, and the identification 
was a false one. It is necessary to “‘ justify” oneself for the 
past, or to associate oneself with another’s act sufficient to secure 
“justification”? ; but this is only the beginning of the righteous 

life, not (as the Jew supposed) the beginning and the end as well. 
We come, then, to the other question, In what sense does the 
death of Christ win “forgiveness of sin”? Forgiveness ob- 
viously means resumption, by the injured party, of the same 
attitude towards the offender (e.g. an attitude of friendliness) as 
was exhibited by him before the offence. Forgiveness, therefore, 
is (in strict thought) different from the resumption between the 
two parties of the same relations as before the offence. It is the 
act of one party—the injured—and not of both. But the goal 
of forgiveness is obviously the resumption of the relations of which 
the resumption of the attitude (of friendliness or the like) is a part 
but no more than a part. ‘There is therefore a sense in which 
forgiveness may be called incomplete until these relations are 
resumed ;— it is not incomplete in character indeed, but it is in- 
complete in its effects. No one has put this paradox more finely 
+ dpyn with Oedc, Rom. i. 18, iii. 5, ix. 22; Eph. v. 63 Col. iii, 6; 


without @edc, Rom. ii. 5, 8, iv. 15, V. 9, 1X. 22, Xil. 19, xiii. 5 ; Eph. ii. 3; 
t Thess. i. 10, ii. 16, v. 9. 


The Vocabulary of the Atonement 273 


than Dr. Moberly. ‘‘ Love wears the form and carries the name 
of ‘ forgiveness,’ ” he writes,! “‘in its anticipatory and provisional 
relation to the penitent. We call love ‘ forgiveness’ just when and 
just because the penitent, whose very life it is, yet makes and can 
make no claim to deserving it. But the fudl forgiveness to which 
I aspire is the righteous love which, seemmg im me at last the very 
righteousness of Christ, embraces in me the righteousness wich is 
really there.” Although, therefore, the death of Christ does 
not alter God’s attitude to man—that attitude of unswerving 
love could never and needed never to alter; indeed, it showed 
itself in its highest degree in the self-oblation of Christ—it does 
alter the relations subsisting between man and God, and in such 
a way that God’s forgiveness of man, formerly incomplete, 1s 
put on the road to consummation. ‘There may be other and 
deeper ways in which Christ made atonement for man; but 
even the way suggested above makes it possible to say with a 
meaning in every respect conformable to the tests of Christian 
tradition and of unbiassed reason, and passing beyond everything 
contained in our previous affirmations, that ‘‘ He died that we might 
be forgiven,” that “‘ He paid the price of sin,’ and that we are 
‘saved by His precious blood.” 

That being so, we may with confidence revert for the last 
time to the New Testament and to Catholic thought, and draw 
from them one more universal phrase to express our meaning. 
It is true that St. Paul eschewed the words “ forgiveness of sins” 5 
but it is profoundly untrue that he did so to substitute for them 
the idea of justification ; the new idea—his great contribution 
to Christian soteriology—was the word “ reconciliation,” “ 
ment.” Furthermore, his consistent use of the word implies that 
the fulfilment of God’s purposes depends even more upon man 
being reconciled to God than upon God being reconciled to man.? 
But it is in reconciliation that forgiveness first comes to rest and 
finds its goal; without reconciliation forgiveness remains an 
offer to which no answer is vouchsafed. And reconciliation 
sums up in itself every aspect of that restoration of relations between 
the offender and the offended which we have seen to be the crucial 
need in man’s salvation. Where sin is not thought of as an offence 


atone- 


1 Moberly, Atonement and Personality, pp. 62-72, condensed ; the italics 
have been added. 
2 Sanday and Headlam, Romans, pp. 129, 130 3 Rashdall, op. cit. p. 100. 


4g 


274 The Atonement 


against the living God, it is true this need cannot be felt ; but 
where sin is not so thought of, the soul has far to go before it 
begins to realise the fulness of its needs. Even so, Christ’s death 
has a message and a promise for it—the message of example to 
inspire present effort, the promise of victory in the end. Is it 
not true to say that meditation upon the goodness of God revealed 
in this promise and message must lead to a sense, by contrast, of 
human unworthiness of God—unworthiness whose most piercing 
sting lies just in the fact that it is the result of human sin ; and that 
this sense must sooner or later bring with it the knowledge that 
frank penitence and open confession are the first steps towards 
reconciliation ? Once this knowledge is attained, the need for 
a sacrifice is felt ; and where the need 1s felt, in whatever degree, 
great or small, to recognise that in the death of Christ God has 
Himself provided a Lamb for the sacrifice is to lay aside remorse, 
despondency and despair, and to be reconciled to God. 


Note A.—EXEMPLARIST THEORIES OF THE ATONEMENT (see p. 258) 


It is perhaps in a subconscious effort to avoid the criticism here adduced 
that Exemplarist writers lay more stress upon gratitude than upon respect for 
example as the motive to which the death of Christ appeals (cp. Rashdall, of. cit. 
p. tor et pass.) ; for “* gratitude ’’—“ the last spark of the divine image to dis- 
appear from the soul of man”’ (Rashdall, op. cit. p. 361)—-may be thought of 
as a more widespread emotion than “respect for example,” and so less dependent 
upon the intermediary offices of imagination. If this, however, is the real 
object of the insistence upon gratitude, it depends on a fallacy. A man can 
only be grateful in response to some objective service, and on the Exemplarist 
theory the ozly objective service contributed by the death of Christ to man’s 
salvation is its appeal as an example of unswerving obedience to the will of God. 
That this is an objective service we need not deny, indeed (as we have attempted 
to show above, p. 256) it has more objectivity about it than Exemplarist writers 
would care to admit ; but the realisation of its objective value depends wholly 
upon its appeal to the imagination ; and therefore the question as to whether 
it will or will not in any given case elicit responsive gratitude depends in equal 
measure upon that appeal. ‘The shifting of emphasis from the motive of 
respect for example to that of gratitude is a specious obscuring of the issue, which 
leaves the real gist of our criticism untouched. 

It might however be held that any theory of the atonement depends for its 
efficacy in eliciting a response from the individual upon an appeal to the 
imagination, and that this is evidenced by the facts that all theories of justifica- 
tion alike are theories of justification by faith ;—for faith in the atoning work of 
Christ for us is only possible when imagination has been stirred to embrace its 
atoning value. On such grounds it would appear that the assertion in the 
text above, that in the traditional doctrines of grace the unimaginative man 
stood at no disadvantage as compared with his imaginative brother, was wholly 
illusory. This objection, however, depends upon a dangerous confusion’ 
between imagination and common sense. The older theories of atonement, 


Note A 27 5 


however inadequate or misleading they may have been—the Ransom theory, 
the Wergeld-satisfaction theory, and the like—all depended upon an appeal 
to common sense which would be universally recognised. Man is Satan’s 
prisoner,—of course, therefore, someone must ransom him ; man owes a debt 
to God which justice cannot remit,—of course, therefore, someone must pay it 
for him. As Canon Storr has pointed out (Problem of the Cross, pp. 10-13), 
these traditional theories were erected upon the universally accepted axioms of 
contemporary thought. Common sense would therefore at once see their 
relevance and necessity ; no effort of imagination was necessary ; faith—and 
consequently grace—was in reach of the most pedestrian and prosaic. mind. 
But the Exemplarist theory is notso. Here common sense is satisfied with some 
such dictum as “ Man must live the moral life ; conscience, Scripture, the 
Church tell him in what that moral life consists ’’ ; it does not rise to the afiirma- 
tion, “ of course he must have an example.” Whether a given example—even 
the highest—will help a sinner or not depends, therefore, wholly upon the 
exercise of his imagination. 

No doubt the verdict of common sense changes with the ages ; and what to 
patristic or medizval thought seemed obvious may appear to us fantastic or 
untrue. But modern “ objective ’’ theories are all of them attempts to find a 
basis in common sense—in some proposition whose cogency will be universally 
admitted—and not in imagination. Thus the theory outlined in the later para- 
graphs of this essay (pp. 262-270), however imperfect and inadequate it may be, 
must stand or fall entirely in accordance as the reader’s common sense accepts 
or rejects the postulate on which it depends—namely, that where offence has 
been committed, “ natural fitness’” demands not merely reformation of char- 
acter but also some form of overt acknowledgment as an appropriate and 
adequate means of restoring ruptured relations. 

Dr. Denney (Death of Christ, p. 177) launched a somewhat confused criticism 
of the appeal to gratitude in Exemplarist theories, based on the fact that some 
Exemplarists had forgotten to emphasise the objective value of an example of 
loyalty to the service of God and man. By restoring the emphasis, Dr. Rashdall 
had little difficulty in rebutting this criticism at its face value (0. czt. pp. 440 ff. 
—note that the references to the pages in The Death of Christ appear to be 
incorrect). But the real point of Dr. Denney’s criticism remains unaltered. 
The “ rational connection ” between the death of Christ and the “ responsibili- 
ties which sin involves and from which that death delivers ”’—the “‘ intelligible 
relation ”’ between the two—is scarcely apparent to the ordinary mind, unless the 
“ natural fitness” of the explicit acknowledgment of guilt be admitted. Without 
that admission a relationship may indeed be established, as we have admitted, 
between the example of Christ and the needs of man, even on the Exemplarist 
basis ; and in his implicit denial of this Dr. Denney would seem to have over- 
stepped the limits of his argument. But it is certainly not a rational relation- 
ship ; for, as the argument in the text is designed to show, it makes grace 
proportionate not so much to the moral earnestness as to the imaginative 
capacity of the recipient. 

One final criticism of exemplarism may be mentioned. The theory fails to 
show any grounds for belief in the zecessity of the death of Christ. The ultimate 
arguments for that necessity must be drawn, as we have seen, even more from the 
corporate character of human sin (demanding as it does corporate or representa- 
tive acknowledgment—see above, p. 269) than from its cosmic character (above, 
pp. 251-253). It is just this need for a corporate acknowledgment which the 
Exemplarist denies ; his theory loses all distinctiveness unless he insists that the 
example and teaching of Christ were the only benefits conferred on man by His 


276 The .1tonement 


life and death. Were he to allow that possible interpretation of his theory 
which emphasises (p. 256 above) a psychological compulsion to Christian 
heroism objectively resulting from th: example of Christ, we might still be 
in a position to assert the necessity of that example with some appearance of 
plausibility ; the more the compelling character of the example were emphasised, 
the more it would appear unlikely that without it (and consequently without 
the death of Christ) man could work out his own salvation. But few Exemplarist 
writers care to emphasise this aspect of their theory, for the reason that they wish 
to avoid any suggestion (not merely that involved in so-called “ transactional ”” 
theories) that a change in man’s spiritual condition can be brought about by 
any agency external to his own conscious moral efforts. ‘They are therefore 
compelled to postulate that the example of Christ can only be effective in the 
lives of those who consciously meditate upon His life and death. We should be 
the last to deny the supreme value and importance of such conscious meditation ; 
but if this be the only way in which the life and death of Christ can alter man’s 
spiritual condition, it must be conceded that it can hardly be a necessary way. 
For it to be necessary it would have to be asserted that o other possible subject 
of meditation could be depended upon to rouse the Christian to a moral effort 
sufficient to win salvation; and such an assertion would at once be too unsub- 
stantiated, and too suggestiveof a “ magical formula,” unfailingly efficacious in 
the case of all who had recourse to it, to commend itself to Exemplarist thought. 

It follows, therefore, that on the strict logic of the Exemplarist theory, its 
supporters would be unable to subscribe to the belief that man cannot be saved 
apart from the death of Christ, without sacrificing all the distinctive positions for 
which they are really contending. Where writers of this school of thought 
commit themselves to language which appears to assert the universal necessity of 
Christ’s death for men, the fact can only be attributed to a failure to grasp the 
full implications of their system ;—or better, and probably more truly, to the 
victory of a genuinely Christian sentiment over a faulty human logic. 

It remains only to notice Canon Storr’s version of exemplarism. To him the 
death of Christ is principally not an example of obedience to the will of God, 
but a revelation of God’s sympathy with sinful man and His consequent 
suffering on account of man’s sin (Problem of the Cross, pp. 133, 136, 152, etc.— 
with quotations from Canon Wilson and Dr. White). It is noteworthy that 
although this position (which of course contains in itself a profound and wholly 
Christian truth) might establish a better case for the necessity of Christ’s death 
than other versions of exemplarism, Canon Storr himself evades the test (“‘ The 
burden lies on the shoulders of those who criticise,” p. 139), which elsewhere 
he regards as ‘“‘ very important’ (p. 108) and applies rigorously to theories 
which he rejects (pp. 93, 108, 111). However this may be it remains true that 
the other criticisms we have urged against exemplarism hold with equal force 
in this case. 


Notre B.—Dr. MOBERLY’s THEORY OF THE ATONEMENT 


The debt which this essay owes to Dr. Moberly’s Atonement and Personaltty, 
and especially to the sixth chapter of that great book, is so obvious that any 
comment on its position might seen unnecessary. But those who, with the 
present writer, find themselves continually recurring to Dr. Moberly’s pages 
for fresh light upon the mystery of the Atonement, will notice in this essay 
the omission of two of his most important phrases—‘‘ Christ the Perfect 
Penitent”’ and ‘‘ Christ inclusively man.’ Canon Storr (Problem of the Cross, 
ch. ix.) has published a very fair and friendly appreciation of the merits and 
defects of these two phrases to which little need be added. The first (“‘ Christ 


Note C 277 


the Perfect Penitent”’) is a beautiful and arresting paradox, whose meaning 
cannot be obscure to any but the most pedantic and literal mind ; it has not 
been avoided here of strict purpose, and its meaning has as far as possible been 
expressed in analogous ways. The second (“Christ inclusively man ”’) is 
perhaps more open to question, as witness Dr. Rashdall’s criticisms (Idea of 
Atonement, pp. 424, 4253 #.T.S. iil. 178-211—Dr. Rashdall censures similar 
phrases used by Dr. Ottley and Mr. Mozley ; Canon Storr also quotes a kindred 
passage from Dr. Du Bose). The phrase covers three (if not four) distinct 
ideas which it is well to keep apart, as confusion between them may produce 
an erroneous impression that their implications have not been fully thought 
out, if not that the phrase itself is virtually meaningless : (a) that atonement by 
a Representative is the natural or even the necessary way in which corporate 
guilt can be acknowledged ; (4) that such representative acknowledgment, if 
fitly expressed, will be adequate in the case of each individual offender who 
chooses to associate himself therewith ; (c) that “incorporation in Christ,” 
of which the sacraments are at once a symbol and a means, is for Catholic 
thought the most obvious way in which man can (i) associate himself with 
Christ’s acknowledgment of sin on his behalf, and (ii) derive from God those 
other benefits of the death and resurrection of Christ (victory over sin and 
circumstance and the like) to which allusion has been made. It has been the 
purpose of this essay to keep these separate implications of the phrase as distinct 
from one another as possible (for (a) see p. 269; for (0), pp. 266f.; (c) (1) has not 
been dealt with here, but is fully treated in the concluding essay of this book ; 
for (c) (ii) see p. 261) ; and to this end the phrase itself has not been used. But 
analysis is not necessarily the best way of expressing Christian truth ; and though 
the writer has thought himself bound, in the present case, to use the analytic 
method, he would take this opportunity of wholly and gladly associating him- 
self with what he takes to be the rich complex of meanings underlying Dr. 
Moberly’s synthetic phrase. 


Note C.—TuHE TERM “ SATISFACTION ’’ AS APPLIED TO THE 
DEATH OF CHRIST 


A note on the traditional (but not Scriptural) term satzsfaction, as applied to 
the death of Christ, will not be inapposite, especially as it is the term to which 
critics of the doctrine of Atonement most commonly take exception. The 
application is first made by Radulphus Ardens in the eleventh century (Riviere, 
p. 289), but it was really popularised by Anselm. It is often thought to be 
derived from the Teutonic concept of the Wergeld, or compensation paid by 
(2.g.) a homicide to his victim’s clan (see reff. Rivitre, pp. 308-309; ¢p. 
Rashdall, p. 352, note 1) ; and the necessary corollary that Christ (on the theory 
of satisfaction) paid a penalty due from man which exempted man from any 
further responsibility is rightly stigmatised as clearly immoral. But there 
seems to be no doubt that the phrase was in fact borrowed by soteriology from 
the penitential system of the Church, where it had been used since Tertullian’s 
time to designate the penitential acts (or, as they are now called, penances) which 
should accompany contrition (Rivitre, Rashdall, wt sup.). At first sight this 
does not appear to affect the inherent immorality of the theory, until the full 
implications of satisfactio are seen. In legal Latin the word meant not so much 
“ compensation” as “ surety,” “ guarantee’’—not that which satisfies a creditor 
in full, but that which satisfies him of the good faith of the debtor. ‘‘ Non idem 
sunt satisfacere et solvere; nam solvit qui creditori pecuniam omnem numerat ; 
satisfacit qui quocumque modo creditorem placat—v.g. cautione, satisfactione, 
pignore, partis debiti solutione ” (Forcellini, Lewicon, s.v.). Hence in classical 


278 The Atonement 


Latin, when applied to offences, it may mean no more than “ making suitable 
apology ”’—‘‘purgare se de injuria illata, verbis excusare, deprecari, veniam 
petere culpam fatendo”’ (zb.) ; cp. Digest, 46, 3, 52. 

No doubt the idea of “‘ payment in full” attached itself in popular thought 
to the term in its penitential usage (e.g. to avoid the poena temporalis of sin) ; 
but the other conception was never lost. “Thus Ambrose, de poenit. ii. 9 (80), 
points out that penitential works could never merit forgiveness ; though called 
““ satisfaction ”’ the idea of “ full compensation’”’ was wholly absent. So too 
Hooker, commenting upon Tertullian, points out that ‘ repentance and the 
works thereof are termed satisfactory, not for that so much is thereby done as 
the justice of God can exact, but because . . . they draw the pity of God 
towards us (dlices divinae misericordiae—Tert. de poenit.g).” ‘‘ Satisfaction as 
a part [z.e. as distinct from contrition] comprehendeth only that which the 
Baptist meant by works worthy of repentance” [xaptovg a&tous tig wetavolac 
Lk. i. 8] (Hooker, Eccles. Pol. vi. 5). Furthermore, “ satisfaction”? was not 
a sine qud non of absolution ; the latter could be given before penance was 
performed (as in the present discipline—which Hooker (ut sup.) indeed calls 
a “strange preposterous course,” though what he is really inveighing against 
is the distinction between eternal and temporal punishment on which many 
of its defenders based it) ; or could be waived by the Bishop (Conc. Anc. can. 55 
Conc. Nic. can. 12)—though there was always some doubt as to the validity of 
this (Bingham, Origines, xviii. iv. § 6). 

From this it would appear that we are not going beyond the strict limits of 
patristic thought if we say of satisfaction (in the sense of “ penitential works ’’) 
that though (a) generally necessary, it is (5) quite different from repentance, 
(c) inoperative without repentance (thisis universally agreed), (¢) not an “adequate 
compensation” to God for the offence committed, but rather a “ suitable 
acknowledgment”? thereof, and a pledge of newness of life. This gives to 
“ satisfaction”’ in Christian theology a meaning identical with that assigned 
in the text above to “‘ reparation”’ (pp. 263 ff.), and allows us to use the term of the 
death of Christ (as in the case of the Anglican Prayer of Consecration) not 
with any implication of the idea of an ‘“‘angry God”? who has to be placated, 
but as suggesting that Christ, by His death, provided a suitable symbol of 
human guilt with which man, to make that due acknowledgment of his sin 
which otherwise could not be made, can associate himself, 

Space forbids any discussion of the meaning of the word “ propitiation.” In 
the text above it has been used as the equivalent of “ satisfaction ” ; but note 
should be taken of Westcott’s contention that “‘ the scriptural conception of the 
verb is not of appeasing one who is angry . . . but of altering the character of 
that which, from without, occasions a necessary alienation and interposes an 
inevitable obstacle to fellowship.” ‘‘ The taxcoude, when it is applied to. 
the sinner, so to speak, neutralizes the sin.” (Additional note on 1 John ii. 2, 
Epistles of St. ‘Fohn, pp. 83 ff.) If Westcott’s view be adopted, propitiation would 
correspond with the meaning we have given to expiation ; considerations sug- 
gesting caution in the acceptance of this view will be found in Sanday and 
Headlam, Romans, p. 130 3; and Moulton and Milligan, / ocabulary of Greek 
Testament, s.v. 2 ; Deissmann, Bible Studies (E.T.), pp. 124 ff; Driver, Art. 
“¢ Propitiation ” in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible, should also be consulted. 


THE RESURRECTION 


BY EDWARD GORDON SELWYN 


CONTENTS 


I. InrropuctTory 
II. THe ResurrecTION IN THE AposToLic TEACHING 


II]. ‘THe Apprarances oF THE Risen Lorp 
1. The Nature of the Evidence 
2. Theories of Visions , 
3. Tests and Types of Mystical Ex perience 
4. Application to the Records of the Batt 
5. Limitations of this Analogy 


IV. Tue Resurrection or CuHrist 


1. Convergent Testimony . 
2. The Empty Tomb 


PAGE 
281 


283 


2QgI 
291 
296 
299 
304 
313 


314 
314 
317 


INTRODUCTORY 


Tue resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ have from the 
earliest days formed a cardinal element in the credenda of the 
Christian Church. ‘They focus with peculiar intensity that faith 
in the Gospel as at once historical and supernatural, which enabled 
Christianity to conquer the pagan religions of the Graeco-Roman 
world ; and by the same token they focus also those doubts and 
problems which are characteristic of modern criticism and enquiry. 
If it be true that the religion of Christ belongs at once to this world 
and to the other ; if it claims to provide a synthesis between the 
_agelong antinomies of ‘Time and Eternity, of Nature and Super- 
nature, of Successiveness and Simultaneity, of Fact and Value ; 
and if it asserts that the secret of this synthesis lies in the mediation 
of a Person ;—then clearly supreme importance attaches to those 
happenings in history in which the Mediator is alleged to have 
decisively and finally vindicated His character. In an earlier 
essay it has been shown that the Christ of the Synoptic Gospels 
must remain “a stranger and an enigma ” to us unless we recognise 
the reconciliation of the two principles of suffering and of glory 
in the unity of His single experience as giving the clue to His life 
and teaching ; and others have drawn out the dogmatic impli- 
cates of this fact, and its reactions upon human sin, freedom and 
forgiveness. It remains to be shown that the revelation thus made 
to the reason and the redemption thus offered to the will are not 
illusory, but were sealed as genuine by a divine action credibly 
attested in history and in character with the momentous Issues 
at stake. 

Various causes combine to make the task one of great com- 
plexity. ‘The resurrection, and still more the ascension, in so 
far as they are facts, are facts on the borderland of history and 
symbol. In the case of the ascension the symbolical element 
greatly outweighs the historical ; one might almost say that the 
faith of the Church would not be other than it is, if by some mis- 
chance the few verses in the Acts which St. Luke devotes to the 


282 The Resurrection 


ascension had not survived. ‘The primary evidence, that is to 
say, is the Church’s experience of Christ’s sovereign power from 
St. Stephen’s day to our own. ‘The resurrection presents a far 
closer balance between the two elements. Who would not feel, 
for example, if we were without the last chapter of each Synoptic 
Gospel or the last two of the Fourth, that the whole significance 
of the story had been changed? ‘The precise determination of 
the fact behind these records is perhaps impossible ; but that some 
historical fact of an unusual order occurred at that point is required 
not only by the existence of the documentary evidence, but by 
the evidence of Christianity ever since. Yet here two important 
cautions must be borne in mind. In the first place, while the 
Christian creed asserts an unequivocal belief in the fact of the 
Lord’s resurrection, it lays down nothing as de fide in regard to 
the manner of it ; and on the latter point many different interpre- 
tations have been given by theologians of unquestioned orthodoxy 
at different times. ‘This does not mean that any such teaching, 
particularly if it seems to endanger the faith-values of the fact, 
should be exempt from criticism. But it does mean that the 
Christian scholar may claim here a large latitude of enquiry and 
thought, and that such criticism as he either makes or receives 
should be frankly in foro theologiae. In the second place, it must 
be observed that the risen Lord appeared only to believers. The 
fact was not of a kind, that is to say, to convert men by its stark 
and palpable marvellousness against their will. We may assume, 
then, that much will depend for our understanding of the resurrec- 
tion on the atmosphere or “spirit”? of our minds. It belongs to 
that order of “ spiritual things,” of which St. Paul says that they 
must be “spiritually discerned.” Apologetics must beware, 
therefore, of trying to do too much—of trying to demonstrate to 
the natural reason a fact which in its historical happening was 
witnessed only by those whose minds had been trained by Jesus. 
If we reach a point where we have to admit that the historical 
evidence can only give probabilities, we may well remember that 
a priort in a matter of this kind historical evidence cannot be 
expected to do more. 

‘The method which I propose to adopt in this essay is the 
familiar one of arguing from the better known to the less known ; 
or, In other words, from the doctrine to the fact. We do know 
with singular precision what was authoritatively taught and 


The Apostolic Teaching 28 3 


believed in the Church within a generation of Pentecost ; and we 
can determine the significance, and observe the centrality, of 
Christ’s resurrection in relation both to doctrine and ethics for 
those first writers and believers. “The first section will therefore 
be devoted to considering the resurrection as part of the apostolic 
teaching. But we cannot stop there. “Ihe Apostles are con- 
vinced that what they preach as the resurrection was a fact of 
history for which unimpeachable testimony existed. Examination 
of this testimony will show that it is concerned partly with 
““ appearances” of the Lord, and partly with circumstances of a 
different kind pointing to the fact that He had risen from the dead. 
In the second section of this essay, therefore, I propose to discuss 
the evidence for the “appearances” as evidence relating to the 
experience of the disciples, to appraise their meaning, and to con- 
sider how far they provide an adequate explanation for the Catholic 
dogma; while the third section will be devoted to an estimate of 
the probabilities in regard to the remainder of the evidence. 


ot 


Tue RESURRECTION IN THE Aposrotic “TEACHING 


Christianity went out into the world as a gospel of emancipa- 
tion. To the Jew it brought emancipation from the cramping 
fetters of the Law; to the Gentile from the doubt and despair 
which haunted the pages of its greatest teachers 5 and to both a 
new freedom from the power of sin. It did this by opening up 
afresh, on the strength of a new and authoritative revelation, the 
true nature of God. It proclaimed Him to be transcendent both 
above the Law, which had once been the embodiment of His will, 
and above those circumstances of sin and death which seemed to 
set such inexorable limits to the possible worth of human life. 
Moreover, this opening up of truths and riches as yet unguessed in 
men’s conception of the Being of God carried with it the uncover- 
ing of new worlds for the spirit of man to move In. Access was 
now given to that heavenly and supernatural order of fellowship 
with God, whose doors had seemed fast closed hitherto: the 
citizenship of Christians was in heaven, and they were heirs of 
eternal life. This call involved new powers and new hopes— 
new powers of conquering sin in this life here, new hopes of 


284 The Resurrection 


immortality hereafter. And the fact which more than any other 
was asserted as the ground of this whole revelation, opportunity 
and call was the resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

In this first preaching of the Gospel the resurrection is set 
forth as primarily a mighty act of God in relation to His only- 
begotten Son. It is a revealing act which at once designates the 
Son and declares the nature of the Father. It designates Jesus as 
the head of the corner, the only Saviour of men,! the Fulfiller of 
Messianic prophecy,? the Lord and Judge of men,? the Son of 
God.* At the same time it declares the nature of the Father as 
‘a living and true God” 5; it was through His power that Jesus 
was raised and now lives®; Christ’s resurrection and ascension 
are demonstrative proofs of God intended to lead men to repose in 
Him their faith and hope.? And this new understanding of God 
through Christ and His resurrection bears the hall-mark of a true 
revelation in spiritual experience. It is, that is to say, funda- 
mentally vocational. This sense of call or mission, of a new and 
divine direction given to life, is one of the means by which men 
are made aware of that element in the transcendent Deity called by 
Otto “energy” or “ urgency.” ‘The resurrection of Jesus was 
felt by the first Christians to be a signal example of this divine 
urgency, laying upon them generally the duties of their vocation 
and upon their leaders in particular their apostolic commission. 
‘The power and purpose of God stand out now with a new definite- 
ness and a richer content. In it St. Paul finds rooted his one title 
to be an Apostle § by it the disciples are emboldened to claim to 
obey God rather than men ® ; through it believers are made certain 
of the limitless spiritual resources now put at their disposal.1° 
Faith in the resurrection has thus mediated a new experience and 
vision of God—a vision and an experience which are attested in 
the positive fruits of new vocation. 

This revelation of the purpose of God and of His power to 

+ Acts iv. 11, 12. The identity of teaching as to the resurrection in the 
speeches in Acts and in the Epistles is one of the important points of internal 
evidence in favour of the genuineness of the former, as at least a reliable reflexion 


of the Christian ideas of the time : though a modern historian such as Eduard 
Meyer regards the external evidence as in itself sufficient. 


a7 PACtS aL ve ery * Rom. xiv.9; Phil. ii.g ff. 
SU ROD a ae yas PTiesstg 0. 
Bie Cor xiieac ‘ete Petsinar. 


® Gal. i.1 5 1 Cor.i. 1; 2 Cor.i.r; Cf EOL, 1X5 te 
PAActs v.'29. rab DNF ECE Ca 


The Apostolic Teaching 285 


achieve it has its counterpart in a great expansion of men’s ideas 
as to the meaning and worth of human life. In the age which 
witnessed the dawn of Christianity no conviction was more wide- 
spread than that of the vanity and corruption of the world and all 
that pertained to it. What the Gospel did was not to deny this, 
but to change its significance by showing that the world was only 
a part of that whole structure of reality with which men had to do. 
It was true that the creation was “subjected to vanity” ; but it 
was of God’s set purpose and for a time only. For the natural 
order—so St. Paul says in a famous passage—is but the vestibule of 
the supernatural ; its bondage is but the presage of liberty ; its 
corruption preparatory to a glorious redemption ; the world as we 
know it is no more than a kind of enclave, soon to be removed, 
within the reality of eternal life.1 And the assurance of this 
reality derives from the resurrection of Jesus.” It is the risen 
Lord who has “abolished death and brought life and incorruption 
to light through the gospel.” ® Once before in history God’s 
people had known what it was to enter upon a new inheritance. 
It was when Israel saw the fulfilment of long-cherished hopes at 
the entrance into Canaan. But there the analogy ends. For 
the new inheritance opened up to Christians is infinitely more 
satisfying than their storied land ever was to the Jews. Its wealth 
is incorruptible, its boundaries inviolable, its resources permanent, 
its nature not of earth but of heaven. And its possession is secured 
to believers by Christ’s resurrection.* New ends are thus pro- 
posed to human life ; its destiny is given a fresh scope; man’s 
spirit breathes in a new air. 

One effect of this changed outlook and proportion is a trans- 
valuation of those very experiences in which man enters most 
sensitively into the sorrow and vanity of the world. Ina passage 
of poignant intimacy ® St. Paul tells how the Christian life, and 
particularly the life of an Apostle, is a perpetual reproduction of 
the Lord’s death and resurrection. In his weariness, perplexity, 
persecution he feels himself to be “ always bearing about in his 
body the dying of Jesus.” But it is compensated for and balanced 
by a parallel manifestation of the life of Jesus, both in the Apostle 
himself and yet more signally in the life of the Church he serves. 


1 Rom. vill. 18 ff. 2 Rom. viii. rr, which governs the context. 
NT Bt bee ble Aare Petr i03 ift: 
5 2 Cor. iv. 7-15. 


286 The Resurrection 


Here we have that principle of life through death and glory through 
humiliation, which is the clue to the synoptic portrait of the Christ, 
transferred from the Master to the disciple, from the field of history 
to that of spiritual experience. “The gospel of the resurrection 
is a gospel of salvation, because it offers fellowship with God in a 
new quality of life, and this is the ground of rejoicing. But this 
rejoicing does not mean that the Christian is exempt from trials ; 
it means that he finds in them a new significance as a test and proof 
' of his faith.+ 

But it is the moral element involved in the new relation to 
God which the Apostles press most urgently upon their converts. 
St. Peter at Caesarea and St. Paul at Antioch in Pisidia alike insist 
that the message of the resurrection is a message of “ the remission 
of sins.” 2 He who was “delivered up for our trespasses”’ 
was likewise “raised for our Justification.” 3 “The resurrection 
makes a new start in the moral life of men, which every believer 
is called to reproduce and manifest in his own case. New ethical 
motives, new powers of conquering sin, new standards of right 
living are now proclaimed and accepted. Christ risen from the 
dead now “ lives unto God,” and creates in the hearts of believers 
a life motived by a like fellowship with God # ; the purpose of His 
death and resurrection was that men might abandon their selfish 
interests and make Him the centre of their affections and the end 
of their activities.> And the moral resolutions so originated are 
capable of achievement. “The power of God manifested in the 
raising of Christ from the dead is what has raised Christians from 
paganism to the moral freedom of the converted life ® ; and it is 
for ever available to them as a potent instrument for the conquest 
of sin. ‘The purpose of the resurrection was that believers should 
be joined with the living Christ,’ and find grace through that 
union. And this privilege carried with it obligations of a most 
definite kind. It involved renunciation of sin and of the“ lusts of 
the flesh.” In writing to the Corinthians St. Paul lays particular 
emphasis on the incompatibility of any breach of the law of purity 
with the Christian profession.8 But it would probably be an 


1 1 Pet. i. 6-8; cf. 2 Tim. ii. 8-10. * ACE X..43; KUL eee, 
SSROMs1V a2 5: 4 Rom. vi. 4. 

beAC Ors Vat 

¢ Eph. iu. 5% Colo inst9 Romavitiez: 7 Rom. vii. 4. 


SU Corvie tA, Loe 


The Apostolic Teaching 237 


error to restrict his allusions to the mortification of the flesh to 
impurity alone.t Rather we should interpret them as coterminous 
with the whole range of purely selfish impulses and desires which 
in St. Paul’s philosophy are characteristic of the natural man. In 
reference to all of them the faith of the resurrection meant for the 
Christian the deliberate pursuit of the “ purgative way.” But it 
involved likewise new standards of positive conduct—a walking 
“n “ newness of life.2 A fresh worth-whileness has been given 
to the spiritual life as such. “ If then ye are raised together with 
Christ,’”’ says the Apostle, “‘ seek the things that are above, where 
Christ is, seated on the right hand of God. Set your mind on the 
things that are above, not on the things that are upon the earth.” ° 
Thus the claims of the unseen order upon men’s thoughts and 
interests are laid upon them by virtue of their relation to the risen 
Lord. 

So decisive is the ethical teaching of the resurrection that St. 
Paul can write definitely, “‘ If Christ hath not been raised, your 
faith is vain ; ye are yet in your sins.” * It is part of one of the 
arguments he uses against sceptical opponents at Corinth who 
mocked at the notion of immortality. He would not have done 
this, and the argument would not have served its purpose, had not 
Christian morality been regularly and closely linked with Christ’s 
resurrection in his own and the Church’s teaching. He seems 
indeed to be prepared to admit the strength of the Epicurean—or 
rather the Cyrenaic—argument for pleasure as the highest good, 
if the resurrection is a myth. For the resurrection is the one 
sure pledge and guarantee men have of the reality and claim of that 
other order of ends and values whose evidence proves the fallacy 
of hedonism. Christ’s resurrection, the Christian’s experience of 
moral redemption, and his hope of immortality are three facts 
so closely locked together that none of them can be disowned 
without the repudiation of the others. It is significant of the whole 
outlook of the first age of Christianity that this great chapter on 
the Christian hope should close with the note of practical exhorta- 
tion. ‘ Wherefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, un- 
movable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as 
ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.” ® 


1 Rom. vi. 12-19, Vill. 12. 2 Rom. vi. 4. 
3 Col. iii. 1 (The Epistle for Easter Day). 
4 1 Cor. xv. 173 cf. 1 Cor. XV. 32. 5 1 Cor. xv. 58. 


288 The Resurrection 


But we are already trenching upon that further issue which for 
large numbers of Christian believers throughout the ages has given 
to the resurrection of Jesus its most significant appeal. It is true 
to say that thousands to whom the doctrinal or the moral bearing 
of the Easter message means little or nothing yet pin their faith to 
it as the main assurance we have of the life beyond the grave. And 
in this the popular sentiment of Christendom undoubtedly reflects 
the mind of the New ‘Testament. It is by that act of raising Jesus 
from the dead, and by that in unique measure, that God has certified 
believers of their immortality. 

A full discussion of the New Testament doctrine of immortality 
would fall outside the scope of this essay ; and we must confine 
ourselves to those aspects of it which have a direct and detailed 
bearing upon the problem of the resurrection of Christ. The two 
passages of particular importance are both to be found in the letters ~ 
which St. Paul addressed to the Church of Corinth.! It is not an 
accident that that cosmopolitan city should have elicited a peculiarly 
full treatment of the subject. [he Church there contained both 
Jews and Greeks, and it was in close contact with a world where 
every phase of speculation passed rapidly from mouth to mouth. 
‘Thus the Jewish element found little difficulty in believing in a 
resurrection ; but they were no less exercised than the Jewish 
Christians of ‘Ihessalonica as to what the belief portended for those 
who died before the “coming” of the Lord. ‘To the Greek 
element, on the other hand, the whole idea of resurrection was 
perplexing. If they had avoided the current scepticism of the 
philosophical schools, it was usually through recourse to some 
Orphic or Platonic conception which asserted only the immortality 
of the soul and despaired altogether of the body. St. Paul, who 
was at once Jew and Greek, was well equipped for handling such 
a situation; and we can, in fact, see him in 1 Corinthians xv. 
addressing himself now to the Jewish and now to the Greek section 
among his readers.” 

‘The Apostle’s teaching in this chapter, so familiar to us from 
the Burial Service, may be summarised as follows. Christian 
immortality is conceived after the analogy of a grain of corn, which 
is sown in the earth dead and renews itself in the grains of the 
ensuing harvest. It involves, that is to say, a continuity of indivi- 


JOT COG AY.) 5 een Orn. 
2 Cf. Lake, Earlier Epistles of St. Paul, p. 218. 


The Apostolic Teaching 289 


dual life, but a transformation of the form or “ body” in which 


that life finds expression. “There is a connection between the 
earthy body and the heavenly body, in that each in its time is 
appropriate to the individual life which it embodies ; though the 
point is emphasised that the heavenly embodiment is the gift or act 
of God. In the case of Christians already dead, or dying before 
the Lord’s ‘‘ coming,” the transformation from the earthy to the 
heavenly body entails the dissolution of the former in death, 
followed by a period of waiting ; whereas for those who survive 
to that day the transformation is immediate and sudden. But in 
point of fact death is really irrelevant for Christians. For them the 
only thing in connection with death which matters is sin, “They 
share the physical mortality of all the sons of Adam ; but, if they 
have laid sin aside, this mortality is overwhelmed in and swallowed 
up by that other life which Christians also now share, the immortal 
life of Christ. 

The irrelevancy of death as a barrier to immortality, and the 
certainty of the spiritual body, are proved by Christ’s resurrection. 
In one sense the Greeks are right 5 ‘‘ flesh and blood,” the material 
particles of the body, cannot as such inherit eternal life. But they 
are wrong in not seeing that there must be a body in that life. At 
the same time there are differences between the resurrection of 
Christ and that of those who are His, corresponding to the difference 
of rank which belongs to Him in the hierarchy of spiritual beings.* 
So He experienced ‘‘ on the third day ” that completeness of trans- 
formation for which Christians who are dead have to wait until 
His “coming.” He is distinguished from Christians already dead 
in that His body knew no decay; from Christians now living in 
that the spiritual body is already His. His bodily transformation, 
though it involved death, did not involve corruption ; and, though 
it involved resurrection, did not involve an interval of waiting.” 


1 y Cor. xv. 23. Canon Streeter’s whole treatment of the resurrection 
in Foundations is governed, as he admits, by the assumption that the parallelism 
between the resurrection of Christ and that of Christians is complete. But 
this is surely too facile. What is true, as Professor Lake points out, is that 
certain important features in St. Paul’s view of the resurrection of Christians 
are based on his knowledge of the resurrection of Christ. 

2 The argument is not affected if we adopt Dr. McNeile’s thesis (The Problem 
of the Future Life, p. 107) that “in some sense the formation of the spiritual 
body has already begun [sc. in this life here], and is being progressively formed 
with our spiritual progress.” The idea is attractive, and, as he points out, is 
consistent with much N.T. teaching. But it would still remain true that for 

U 


290 The Resurrection 


That is the gist of St. Paul’s teaching in the two great passages 
under review. It issometimes said that the later passage (2 Cor. v.) 
is inconsistent with the earlier. But careful examination does not 
endorse this. There is a change of phraseology through the use 
of the metaphors of a heavenly “ house” and of heavenly “ cloth- 
ing” to describe the spiritual body. There is a change in the 
practical point of the argument, which in the earlier passage turns 
on popular doubts and questionings, in the later on the contrast 
between the sufferings of the present and the glory of the future. 
And there is, further, the addition of a new idea—the idea that 
Christians already dead are if anything more privileged than those 
still living, because they are in closer proximity to their Lord. 
But so far as the main principles of the teaching are concerned, 
there is no alteration. It still remains true that, for St. Paul, 
immortality means a body of different texture from that of earth ; 
that this body is an endowment given to each believer by God 5 
that Christians already dead pass by resurrection, after a period of 
waiting, to the manifestation of this transformed or spiritual body, 
while those who survive to the ‘‘coming” enter upon it suddenly 
and without delay; and that of both these hopes the resurrection 
of Christ is the great security and pledge. 

It has been necessary to describe St. Paul’s teaching in these 
chapters with some fulness, because it is sometimes stated that his 
doctrine would not be stated as it is, if he had accepted the tradi- 
tional ideas connected with the empty tomb. ‘That, however, 
is to overstate the case. Not only is there a very wide agreement 
among critical scholars, including even Schmiedel, that one who 
like St. Paul had been brought up in Pharisaical circles must be 
assumed to have accepted these traditional ideas, unless he definitely 
states the contrary ; but it also ignores some important considera- 
tions. It ignores, for example, the care with which St. Paul sets 
Christ in a “rank” of His own distinct from those of other 
Christians ; and still more it fails to recognise that details of the 
manner of Christ’s resurrection would be foreign to the argument 
which the Apostle is here developing. On the other hand, it can 
fairly be urged that the very fact that St. Paul keeps these details 
in the background, even though he assumed them as part of the 


St. Paul Christ’s resurrection is differentiated from that of Christians in that 
the process of transformation was in His case completed without corruption and 
within a very brief period of time. 


The Appearances of the Risen Lord 291 


regular belief of the Corinthian Church, is not without its signi- 
ficance ; while the emphasis he lays upon the difference between 
the earthy and the spiritual body in the case of Christians does 
require us to suppose that he conceived of Christ’s risen body as 
spiritual too, transcending the ordinary properties of matter, in 
conformity with that heavenly order into which at the resurrection 
He had passed. It will be important to bear this in mind, when we 
come to deal with that subject more closely.t 


. BL 


Tue APPEARANCES OF THE RisEN LorpD 


1. The Nature of the Evidence 


We have considered at some length the evidence for the reac- 
tion of the resurrection-faith on the first generation of Christians ; 
and we have seen that it postulates the occurrence in the historical 
order of some fact of transcendent significance touching Jesus 
Christ. It is now time to examine the more direct historical 
evidence. In part, we have already touched it; for St. Paul’s 
teaching in 1 Cor. xv. is prefaced by a brief historical summary, 
which is in fact the earliest documentary testimony we have as to 
the resurrection. Its date is somewhere in the middle fifties of 
the first century ; and it points back to still earlier dates—one the 
period of St. Paul’s first preaching in Corinth, which may be placed 
in A.D. 49 or 50; the other that of his conversion, probably in 
35 A.D., when he received authoritative instruction in the truths 
of the Gospel. ‘The facts, that is to say, of which he reminds 
the Corinthians, are facts which he had received and believed for 
several years past ; and they were the common property of the 
Church in Jerusalem within at most six years of the crucifixion. 
‘The summary itself, moreover, falls into two parts. “The first 
has all the marks of a primitive credo. It not only contains the 
death, burial, resurrection, and appearances of Jesus, but notes that 


1 It may be pointed out, further, that both the passages we have been 
considering may be dependent on the Book of Wisdom. Cf. W. L. Knox, 
St. Paul and the Church in ferusalem, pp. 128 f. . 


292 The Resurrection 


the death was “ for our sins,” that the resurrection was “ on the 
third day,” and invests both events with the dignity of religious 
dogma by adding that they were fulfilments of Scripture. “The 
second part contains further allusions to appearances of Jesus, 
closing with that which had been experienced by the Apostle 
himself ; the purpose of this second section being to reinforce the 
evidence for the resurrection, to expand its significance, and to 
account for St. Paul’s own title to be an Apostle.} 

‘The evidence of the Gospels is naturally of a different kind 
from that of St. Paul; for here we are dealing with narratives 
definitely purporting to be historical. Nowhere does the criticism 
of the Gospels present more complicated literary and historical 
problems than in regard to the resurrection. 

The earliest narrative, St. Mark’s, unfortunately bee off 
after recording the discovery of the empty tomb and before coming 
to speak of any appearances of Jesus ; and the concluding twelve 
verses are usually recognised as a précis, compiled by a much later 
hand, of other accounts then current in the Church, some of which 
are more fully given in our other Gospels. St. Luke appears to 
have material of his own for this part of his story no less than for 
that of the Passion, derived perhaps from some member of the 
Herodian household# ; and it is possible that his concluding 
chapter may have belonged to the first edition of his work, if 
such were indeed prepared, and so have been written no later than 
St. Mark. ‘The internal evidence of this Gospel cuts both ways : 
for while the naturalness of the narrative, especially of that of the 
walk to Emmaus, tends to bear out the high opinion of St. Luke’s 
trustworthiness as a historian which his own preface and the study 
of his works as a whole have led scholars to form, yet there are 
features in it which many will regard as secondary and as presuppos- 


1 A division of this kind seems to me necessitated by the phrasing. To the 
end of verse 5 (‘‘ then to the twelve ’’) each clause is introduced by the con- 
junction 6t1, while from verse 6 onwards the direct statement is used (2mert« 
607). Moreover it is impossible that the record of the appearance to St. 
Paul himself (v. 8) could have been part of the primitive credo ; so that a divi- 
sion somewhere in the list of appearances is inevitable. ‘This is also Meyer’s 
view. At the same time it is quite possible that the whole list represents an 
agreed statement arranged between St. Paul and the other Apostles on one of 
his visits to Jerusalem, with a view to making clear his title to'the Apostolate. 

2 Cf. Sanday, Outlines, p. 172. 

8 Cf. Canon Streeter’s hypothesis of a Proto-Luke, which has secured 
influential support. 


The Appearances of the Risen Lord 293 


ing problems and questionings of a later day than the resurrection 
‘tself Nevertheless it is important to remember that St. Luke 
was brought into close touch with 5t. Paul and the other Apostles, 
and no doubt had access to several streams of oral testimony. St. 
Matthew’s account is from the historian’s point of view perhaps 
the most baffling. It has commonly been supposed to incorporate 
part at least of the “‘ lost ending ”’ of St. Mark ; but this is impos- 
sible to prove, and internal evidence points to certain features of the 
record as having been amplified in transmission. The verdict of 
the historian on the Synoptic evidence for the resurrection would 
recognise that in St. Mark and St. Luke we have two independent 
lines of testimony of whose general worth we can form a clear 
estimate ; while the first Gospel, if in some respects it follows 
St. Mark, also incorporates elements of floating tradition the value 
of which cannot to-day be determined. 

There remain the Fourth Gospel and the Acts. Our estimate 
of the Johannine evidence must clearly be very largely affected by 
the view we take of the historical value of the Gospel as a whole ; 
though it must be recognised that no part of it falls in so well with 
the belief that the writer was, or was in immediate touch with, an 
eye-witness and disciple of Jesus as the last two chapters. “The 
narratives are detailed, and yet marked by the greatest reserve ; 
they are marked by inward consistency, and yet this consistency 
does not appear artificial ; and they imply such a conception of the 
resurrection as we may well suppose St. Paul to have held. Canon 
Streeter has recently gone so far as to conjecture that St. John xxi. 
rather than St. Matthew xxviii. is our best guide as to the © lost 
ending” of St. Mark. Be that as it may, it is difficult to believe 
that the historian who approaches these chapters without parti 
pris can fail to be arrested by their intrinsic claims to his serious 
consideration. 

Before we pass to a study of what the records tell us, a word 
should be said with regard to the importance of the Acts of the 
Apostles. What the Acts does is to attest beyond all question a 
fact which must govern our whole estimate of the historical evidence 
for the resurrection. It is the fact of the changed lives and 
characters of the Apostles. Whatever else we may say of the 
resurrection, we are compelled by the narrative in the Acts to see 
in it a historical happening adequate to account for the vast psycho- 


1 Cf. Loisy’s view that it is influenced by reaction against Docetism. 


294. The Resurrection 


logical and spiritual change thus attested.1 What Paley said of 
«the Christian miracles” in general is true of the resurrection, 
that “‘ many professing to be original witnesses . . . passed their 
lives in labours, dangers, and sufferings, voluntarily undergone in 
attestation of the account which they delivered, and solely in con- 
sequence of their belief of these accounts; and that they also 
submitted, from the same motives, to new rules of conduct.” 
That is a fact which may not take us very far in the determination 
of historical detail ; but it will at least absolve us from giving 
serious attention to the views of those who attribute the rise of 
belief in Christ’s resurrection either to some skilful fraud or to 
some trivial mistake.” 

Further, a very strikmg symbol of this change in the lives of 
the disciples may be seen in the religious observance of the first 
day of the week, of which Acts records the beginnings.? It is 
clear that the primitive Church in Jerusalem maintained, even 
with some ostentation, the customs of the Jewish Church and not 
least that of the Sabbath ; but they added to this the regular 
observance of the first day of the week as their especial day of 
worship, and this gradually came to supersede entirely the obser- 
vance of the Sabbath. When one reflects on the tenacity with 
which devout people cling to religious customs of long standing, 
it is obvious that some unusually strong cause must have operated 
to produce so startling an innovation as that involved in the institu- 
tion of the Christian Sunday. Such a cause can be found in the 
association of the first day of the week with the Lord’s resurrec- 
tion, but in nothing else. There is no suggestion in antiquity that 
this observance had any other root but the commemoration of that 
fact * ; nor is there any trace of evidence for any kind of apostolic 


1 It does not seem to me necessary here to discuss the narratives in the 
apocryphal Gospel according to the Hebrews and the Gospel of Peter. These 
are clearly Tendenzschriften belonging to the second century, and cannot be 
regarded as independent sources. The former is interesting, however, as stating 
that the appearance to St. James was accompanied by an eucharistic action— 
““ He took bread and blessed and brake ’”—analogous to that at Emmaus. 

2 As, for instance, that the women went to the wrong grave, or that the 
Lord was not really dead when taken down from the cross. 

STAC SAT se cf t Gord xine. 

4 There appears to be no suggestion that the occurrences of Pentecost 
recorded in Acts ii. were responsible for the observance of Sunday. Pentecost 
remained for Christians, as it had been for Jews, an annual festival (Acts xx. 16), 
and no connection with the weekly Sunday can be traced. 


The Appearances of the Risen Lord 295 


decree initiating the usage. It grew up, that is to say, as the natural 
and spontaneous expression of the faith that on the first day of the 
week Jesus rose from the dead ; and it thus affords strong indirect 
support to that note of time In regard to the resurrection in which 
all the documents agree. 

It has often been observed that the Gospel narratives of the 
resurrection present a number of discrepancies, which it is 
exceedingly difficult and indeed probably impossible to harmonise. 
Some of them are insignificant ; but others, such as the place of 
the appearances, whether Jerusalem or Galilee or both, and the 
length of time over which they were spread, are more substantial 
and we need not shrink from admitting that the evidence forbids 
our giving upon them a decisive verdict. But this is by no means, 
as is sometimes supposed, to discredit the evidence as a whole. On 
the contrary, it is rather a testimony to its honesty. When we 
remember that the facts it handles were ex hypothest such as baffled 
a complete explanation, and that the first witnesses confessed them- 
selves incredulous and bewildered in face of them, then the existence 
of discrepancies in the accounts argues a close contiguity with the 
experiences related ; whereas a compact and coherent narrative 
would have given us cause to suspect the deliberate artifice of later 
hands. Precisely similar discrepancies, moreover, meet us in the 
evidence available for many of the most striking events in history 3 
and yet we do not for that reason reject them. What we do is to 
weigh the documents by reference to the position and character of 
their writers ; to weigh the different statements of each by reference 
to the access which the author may be supposed to have had in each 
case to means of observation ; to prefer eyewitnesses or those who 
have had access to the testimony, whether written or not, of eye- 
witnesses ; and not to reject evidence simply because it is of later 
date or lays more emphasis on the supernatural.2 Our duty 
towards the evidence is not to harmonise it, but to weigh it, and 
so doing to form as true an estimate as we can of the happenings to 
which it relates. 


1 These are fully set forth by Schmiedel, in £.B., art. Resurrection. 

2 Cf. Sir Edwyn Hoskyns’ essay above, pp. 164 ff. Also Dr. E. A. Abbott’s 
St. Thomas of Canterbury, i. pp. 348, 388. Note, for instance, Dr. Abbott’s 
observation that the account of Herbert of Bosham, though biassed against 
“ miracle,” is often wrong where others are right. 


296 The Resurrection 


2. Theories of Visions 


One of the main characteristics of modern attempts to account 
for the evidence thus briefly surveyed is the emphasis laid on the 
records of the appearances of Jesus and the interpretation of these 
by some theory of visions. “The kernel of truth, it is urged, which 
underlies the resurrection narratives, is the fact that the disciples 
saw visions of their Master soon after the crucifixion, and passed 
to the inference that He had risen from the dead ; and out of this 
belief and the experiences behind it grew up the legends of the 
“miraculous” resurrection. ‘Lhe theories of visions fall broadly 
into two classes, according as the visions are regarded as “ sub- 
jective” or “ objective.” Supporters of the former view, which 
is well represented by Schmiedel in the Encyclopedia Biblica,} 
insist that the disciples’ visions were “subjective” in the sense of 
being simply a product of their mental condition at the time. “This 
theory, however, encounters acute difficulties from the standpoint 
both of psychology and history. On the psychological side it 
requires us to ascribe to the disciples morbid and pathological 
dispositions which their whole subsequent conduct appears to belie ; 
while historically it involves us in the almost grotesque belief that 
a world-wide religion of some nineteen centuries’ vitality was 
founded on a series of delusions. It is not surprising that more 
sober critics, such as Harnack and Meyer in Germany and the 
English school generally, should have sought for a version of the 
theory which would not be open to such palpable objections. So 
arose the theory of “ objective”’ visions, which, ever since Keim 
propounded his notion of the “telegram from heaven,” has had 
weighty supporters. According to this view the belief in the 
resurrection sprang from the disciples’ visions ; but these visions 
were caused by the invisible Christ Himself, really present with 
them. ‘The disciples were inspired by God to see what they saw : 
Jesus was really alive, and the eye of faith could behold Him. 

An initial criticism of this theory of visions, in whichever of 
these two forms it be presented, is that it involves the use of a 
distinction between “subjective” and “ objective’ which has no 
warrant either from psychology or from philosophy ; and the facts 
which the theory is advanced to explain are left as much hanging 


1 Art. “‘ Resurrection.” 


The Appearances of the Risen Lord 297 


in the air as ever. It is arguable that the distinction corresponds 
closely with that which psychology makes between hallucinations 
and illusions ; but it has been used, at least by supporters of the 
“objective” version, to support a conclusion which involves the 
philosophical judgment of “true” or “‘false.”” “The truth 1s that 
all visions are objective as well as subjective, in that what is seen in 
them, be they dream or hallucination or mystical insight, 1s as 
much an object as in the case of normal perception : the question 
is whether or not the object which the mind images is real or unreal. 
In the former case, the vision may be called “ true” or “ veridical”’; 
in the latter case it may be called “‘ false” ; and in the case of our 
Lord’s resurrection that is the issue which is of primary importance. 
It is necessary, therefore, to discard the distinction which has 
dogged the theory of visions in the literature of Higher Criticism 
on the resurrection. Yet various considerations should make us 
pause before we discard the theory itself. Wehave to remember 
certain facts which make it difficult to believe that, in the narratives 
of the Lord’s appearances, we are dealing with cases of normal 
perception by the disciples. “These facts are partly of a historical, 
partly of a doctrinal order. On the historical side we have the 
fact already alluded to, that none but believers (so faras the Scriptural 
evidence goes) saw the risen Lord ; the Fourth Gospel makes it clear 
that His entrances and exits were mysterious ; and the presumption 
is not unnatural that, if a Herod or a Caiaphas had been present in 
the upper room, he would not haveseen Jesus. “This presumption 
is strengthened by considerations of doctrine. We have St. Paul’s 
clear statement that ‘‘ flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom 
of God’’—a statement which, as Professor Lake points out,? 
appears to rest on his knowledge of Christ’s resurrection and to be 
inconsistent with the belief that His risen body was “‘ material.”” We 
have, finally, our Lord’s own teaching about the resurrection 
state, in which “ they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but 
are as the angels in heaven.” ‘There is, therefore, very strong 
ground for saying that the Lord’s risen body was not physical in the 
sense that it possessed metrical properties, and therefore not per- 
ceptible to any normal percipient.2__ In such circumstances we are 


1 The Resurrection of Fesus Christ, ch. 1. 

2 It would, I suppose, be possible to argue that the risen Lord, though 
normally “ spiritual,” could and did “ externalise ’’ Himself for the duration 
of each appearance, and invest Himself with ‘“‘ mass” for that period. ‘This 
seems to rest on the belief that the appearances of our Lord afford stronger 


298 The Resurrection 


justified in saying that the theory of visions deserves on its merits 
a more sympathetic consideration than it is apt to receive from 
orthodox theologians, It hasa value, that is to say, which is largely 
independent of the question of its adequacy to account for the 
Church’s belief in the resurrection. The appearances of Jesus, 


evidence for His resurrection if they involved normal sense-perception on the 
part of the disciples than if they were “ spiritually discerned.” The following 
passage from an article by a modern philosopher, Dr. C. D. Broad (Hibbert 
Journal, Oct. 1925, pp. 42, 43), will serve as a reminder of how complicated 
the matter in fact is: 


““ Perception may roughly be defined as being in direct cognitive contact 
with an existent something which manifests certain qualities to the percipient, 
and is instinctively regarded by him as a part or an appearance of a more 
extended and more enduring object which has certain other qualities that are 
not manifested to the percipient at the moment. £.g. when I say that I see 
a penny, I am in direct cognitive contact with something which manifests the 
qualities of brownness and approximately circular shape ; and I instinctively 
regard this as a part or an appearance of something which is permanent, which 
has an inside as well as an outside, and which has qualities like hardness and 
coldness that are not at present being manifested to me. If this belief be 
mistaken, I am not perceiving what would commonly be called a ¢ penny.’ 
Now it is notorious that in ordinary sense-perception we are often deluded, and 
sometimes wildly deluded. A simple example is mistaking a mere mirror- 
image for a physical object, and a still more striking example is perceiving 
snakes or pink rats when one is suffering from delirium tremens. It is quite 
certain, then, that there are delusive sense-perceptions. Now, in the case of 
sense-perception there are several tests which we can use to tell whether a per- 
ception is delusive or not. We can check one sense by another, e.g. sight by 
touch. We can appeal to the testimony of others and find out whether they see 
anything that corresponds to what we see. Finally, we can make inferences 
from what we think we perceive, and find whether they are verified. We can 
say: ‘If there are really rats running about my bed my dog will be excited, 
bread and cheese will disappear, and so on.’ And then we can see whether 
anything of the kind happens. Now it does not seem to be possible to test the 
alleged supersensible perception which some people claim to have of God by 
any of these means. Very few people have had the experience at all ; they are 
very difficult to describe, and therefore to compare; and it is very hard to 
point to any verifiable consequences which would follow if, and only if, these 
perceptions were not delusive.” . 


On this we may observe that, on the theory here advocated, precisely the 
same three tests are applicable to the disciples’ perception of our Lord. 
(2) Sight is checked by hearing, and vice versa. St. Luke implies—though he 
does not state—that touch also was used. But, as Professor Goudge has pointed 
out, this sense no less than sight or hearing has its counterpart in mystical 
experience. (b) The testimony of others. So the Emmaus story is checked 
by the Eleven ; that of the Eleven by St. Thomas ; that of the women by the 
two disciples from Emmaus, etc. And the collective character of some of the 
appearances is here in point. (c) The verification of inferences in practice 
corresponds to what the masters of the mystical life speak of as the vocational 
effect of a true mystical experience. 


The Appearances of the Risen Lord 299 


in short, require, and will be found to repay, a careful study simply 
as mystical or vocational experiences of the disciples. 


3. Tests and Types of Mystical Experience 


When we place the “appearances” of Jesus in that category, 
we render them comparable at once with a series of religious 
phenomena with which Catholic theology has a long familiarity. 
It is theology, moreover, of a type fully as critical of its subject- 
matter as that which we are accustomed to associate with modern 
Protestantism. Mystical writers, for instance, such as St. “Theresa 
or St. John of the Cross, insist constantly that the extraordinary 
phenomena of the religious life—ecstasies, visions, locutions and 
the like—are subject to countless dangers, imitations and delusions. 
This is no occasional concession to scepticism, but is a fundamental 
principle of their whole treatment of the subject. “Their phrase- 
ology differs in many respects from that of our psychologists to-day; 
but they are no whit less alive to the distinction between the false 
and the true, the pathological and the spiritual, and to the frequent 
occurrence of morbid states of mind which closely simulate those 
of healthy life. They set themselves, therefore, to diagnose the 
symptoms of each condition ; to formulate canons applicable to 
them ; and to prescribe remedies, such as more exercise and fresh 
air, in cases where there is reason to suspect delusion. In all cases, 
moreover, subjects of abnormal experiences are advised to submit 
them to the criticism, and their lives to the guidance, of some 
competent director. ‘The writings of the great mystics are thus 
characterised by precisely those qualities of vigilance, candour, and 
love of truth which we find in any scientific tradition of thought 
to-day ; and in applying their criteria to the records of the risen 
Lord’s appearances, we are not removing these “into the clouds,” 
but are submitting them to tests of a very concrete and searching 
kind. 

Among the many criteria by which the mystical writers are 
wont to test the truth of visions and locutions, two stand out pre- 
eminently. One is that expressed in the saying of Richard of St. 
Victor : “‘I will not believe that I see Christ transfigured, unless 
Moses and Elias are with Him.” 1 He means that no mystical 


1 Cited by Miss Evelyn Underhill in Theology, x. 1o—an article to which 
I am much indebted. 


300 The Resurrection 


experiences can be trusted as true, unless they are in concord with 
the moral law and with divine revelation. “They must be in 
relation, that is to say, with the authoritative tradition which forms 
the background to the subject’s spiritual life. “This does not mean 
that they are not individual and original ; St. ‘Theresa insists that 
divine communications made in this way are commonly sudden in 
their occurrence and unexpected in their content. But they are 
not fantastic. “They have their context. The form, whether 
visual or auditory, in which they are clothed, must have palpable 
links with the corporate and institutional life to which the subject 
belongs, however much abstraction from it or re-association of its 
elements there be.1 We cannot, of course, always trace these 
connections in the records of their experiences which prophets and 
seers have left to us ; but salient illustrations of the principle come 
readily to mind. “Thus, Isaiah’s vision is plainly coloured by his 
knowledge of the mysterious figures which brooded over the 
mercy-seat. “The “showings” of the Seer of Patmos are steeped 
in the imagery of the Book of Ezekiel and of the Jewish apocalypses. 
St. Augustine’s hearing of the words, tolle, /ege, was the experience 
of one who knew that the Christian faith was contained in 
Scriptures. “The heavenly beings seen by Joan of Arc were 
modelled on the statues familiar to her in her parish church at 
Domrémy. Comparison of the Lucan narrative of the Nativity 
with some of the stories in Judges will suggest that the visions of 
Mary were deeply influenced by her familiarity with the records 
of her nation’s saints. 

The importance of this principle is that it provides a point of 
contact between the saints and modern psychology. ‘The “ tradi- 
tional”? element in the mystical experience on which the saints set 
such store is nothing else than what psychologists denote to-day 
as the product of the unconscious or subconscious mind. ‘They 
assert that visions, trances, dreams and the like are the precipitate, 
so to speak, of activities in which the mind has been engaged below 
the surface of consciousness. “The phenomenon, moreover, 1s 


1 My friend, the Rev. H. K. Skipton, points out to me what is probably 
an interesting example of this in the life of Bunyan. According to Pilgrim’s 
Progress, what eases Christian of his burden is the sight of a crucifix: and 
various facts make it likely that this was a crucifix thrown to the ground some 
years before Bunyan’s day within the precincts of an old monastic house (now 
called Ihe Chantreys) beside the Pilgrim’s Way, which is the “road”’ of 
Bunyan’s book. 


The Appearances of the Risen Lord 301 


by no means restricted to religion. “The well-known French 
mathematician, Henri Poincaré, 1 gives a remarkable example of 
its occurrence in the development of his own researches ; and 
similar first-hand evidence is available for Lord Kelvin. In 
recognising, as the mystical writers do, that the thoughts and images 
round which the mind was working before the vision or audition 
is experienced determine in large part the form of the experience, 
they exhibit a close agreement with the scientific thought of to-day 
as to the psychological mechanism underlying it. Where they 
differ is in refusing to regard this admittedly subjective element as 
the whole story ; the ultimate truth or value of the experience as 
a whole depends on its harmony with the truest and most valued 
convictions and experiences of their conscious life ; and by use of 
this criterion they drew a distinction (which was not a psychological 
distinction) between veridical and non-veridical visions—the former 
coming from God, the latter, either by the suggestion of hallucina- 
tion, or by direct experience, from the devil. And those who 
believe that truth was really reached in analogous ways by a 
Poincaré or a Kelvin will not hesitate to say that on that point the 
saints were right. : 

A second and more certain test of the validity of such visions ~ 
and locutions is to be found in their effect. “The first fear ‘and 
confusion are tranquillised into peace and joy; the soul is humbled, 
not elated ; the words heard are rich in meaning and implication 
and are never forgotten ; their truth is whole-heartedly believed, 
and they are charged with a life-giving authority and power.? 
They are, that is to say, fundamentally vocational. “The test 
provided by the traditional imagery in which such experiences are 
clothed is by itself inconclusive ; its absence renders them suspicious, 
but its presence is not a sufficient guarantee of validity. It is when 
this criterion is reinforced by the further and more telling criterion 
of the effect of the experience on character and life that its veridical 


1 Cited by Canon Streeter in the Hibbert Fournal for January 1925. It is 
curious that Canon Streeter does not notice the inconsistency between this 
citation and his own unproven assertion that this method of arriving at truth 
is characteristic only of ‘‘ primitive ’’ ages or peoples. 

2 Cf. especially The Interior Castle, Mans. vi. 

8 This is so in the case of religious experience. In the case of scientific 
knowledge a better word would be dluminative. It is significant that H. 
Poincaré mentions ‘‘ conciseness, suddenness, and immediate certainty ’”’ as 
leading characteristics of this experience. 


3.02 The Resurrection 


nature becomes evident. “The demonstration that the visions of 
an Isaiah or an Ezekiel were no product of delusion lies in the 
activities to which they were called and through which they left 
an abiding mark upon history ; and the same is true of St. Peter’s 
vision at Joppa, and of St. Paul’s on the way to Damascus. “The 
experiences bore precisely those fruits of penitence and peace, of 
certainty, and above all of clear vocation which the “higher critics” 
of the mystical life assert with unanimity to be the hall-mark of 
divine revelation. 

Once more, the critics of the mystical life discriminate not 
only between true and false in the experiences we are considering, 
but also recognise differences of type among those which are 
veridical, and classify them accordingly. “Three kinds of visions 
and locutions especially are distinguished, and are called respectively 
exterior, imaginal, and intellectual : a classification which is pro- 
bably psychological, corresponding to the degree of visualisation 
in each case. Exterior visions and locutions are those in which 
the subject believes himself to see the object with his bodily eyes 
and to hear the words with his bodily ears. “hese are regarded 
as very rare ; and they are marked by an element of error, in that 
the object seen is not entirely such as in the vision it seems to be. 
The resurrection appearances are commonly assigned to this 
category, in that the Lord’s body, though real, was glorified and 
no longer subject to ordinary physical laws.? Imaginal visions, on 
the contrary, are those in which the subject is aware that his physical 
senses are not employed : he sees with the eye, and hears with the 
ear, of the soul ; the bodily eyes and ears may be closed. Such 
experiences are often accompanied by ecstasy, and sometimes by 
anzsthesia ; the image seen is often an infused light ; and it is 
gone in a flash, though it leaves a permanent impression. “The 
visions of Isaiah, of St. Stephen, and of ‘‘ St. John the Divine” are 
commonly classed here ; a more modern example would be St. 
Francis’s vision at the time when he received the stigmata. . It is 
significant that a modern mystic like the Sadhu Sundar Singh, who 
appears to have been unacquainted with this classification of visions 


1 Dr. Thouless has coined this word as a substitute for the word “ imagin- 
ary ’’ (used by the mystics themselves) as less open to misunderstanding. Intro- 
duction to the Psychology of Religion, p. 73. 

2 Cf. St. Thomas, Summa Theol., III. qu. 54, art. 1-3, where the nature of 
angelic beings is discussed. 


The Appearances of the Risen Lord 303 


and locutions when describing his own, made precisely the same 
distinction between the exterior and the imaginal experiences in 
his own life on purely empirical grounds. The third type of 
phenomena are those which are called “ intellectual,’ when the 
subject is aware of a divine presence and communication, but 
without either sense or imagination appearing to be impressed. 
These may often be of long duration ; and the mystical writers 
agree in regarding them as the most valuable, because the least 
liable to error, of all the three types of experience. It is to this 
class, in all probability, that we should assign the vision described in 
the closing pages of Dante’s Paradiso or that which Pascal records 
in his “‘ Memoriale,” or that again which is recorded by Sir David 
Shackleton in South.1 Finally, we find records of experiences 
which, like some of the “showings” vouchsafed to Julian of 
Norwich, cannot be assigned to any one of these classes simply, 
but can only be styled “ mixed,” in that they present characteristics 
belonging to more than one class. 

In dealing, however, with the resurrection-appearances of 
our Lord, there is an important discrimination to be made. 
Several of the recorded appearances were to a number of people at 
the same time ; whereas the mystical experiences we have been 
considering are normally those of individuals alone. This point is 
important, not for its bearing on the truth or falsehood of the visions 
and auditions (for any argument that might be based on the psycho- 
logical theory of collective hallucinations is open to correction 
at once from the historical fact of collective vocation), but for its 
bearing upon our estimate of the evidence. ‘The effect is greatly 
to broaden our basis of judgment. We have no reason to assume 
that, in the case of these collective appearances, the experiences of 
all the witnesses were of the same type : indeed it is probable that 
they differed considerably in the degree of their visualisation, and 
consequently in the details which they recorded. A cause of this 


1 “*T know,” he writes, after describing the march across South Georgia 
(chapter x), “that during that long and racking march of thirty-six hours 
over the unnamed mountains of South Georgia it seemed to me often that we 
were four, not three. I said nothing to my companions on the point, but 
afterwards Worsley said to me, ‘ Boss, I had a curious feeling on the march that 
there was another person with us.’ Crean confessed to the same idea. One 
feels “ the dearth of human words, the roughness of mortal speech ’ in trying to 
describe things intangible, but a record of our journeys would be incomplete 
without a reference to a subject very near to our hearts.” 


304 The Resurrection 


kind may explain, for example, the discrepancy between the Lucan 
and the Johannine accounts of the appearance to the Eleven on the 
first Easter evening. “Io some who were present it may really 
have appeared that the Lord “ did eat before them,” and St. Luke 
may have preferred this testimony asa safeguard against Docetism! ; 
while St. John preferred evidence in which the “ exterior” 
elements in the experience were less prominent. We can be 
certain that these collective experiences gave rise to various streams 
of oral tradition, and that St. Luke—and probably also the author 
of the Fourth Gospel—was conversant with these. Each 
Evangelist selected the version which best fitted his general purpose 
and his whole conception of the resurrection. But it is a mistake 
to suppose that the versions are mutually exclusive for the historian. 
On the contrary, the differences are what we should expect, if the 
experiences were of the mystical type. 


4. Application to the Records of the Appearances 


‘The application of these principles to the narratives of the 
resurrection produces results of importance in more ways than 
one ; and we may summarise them as follows : 

1. ‘he conclusion, which seems dictated by general considera- 
tions of psychology and history, that the visions of Jesus which the 
disciples saw and the locutions which they heard were veridical 
is filled in and confirmed. A new factor is introduced into our 
estimate of the internal evidence for the Lord’s appearances ; and 
features in the records which historical criticism has tended to 
fasten upon as pointing to the “ subjectiveness ”’ of the experiences 
are found in no way to prove them valueless or untrue, but rather 
to point the other way. ‘Thus, it has been urged that the allusions 
to the breaking of bread at the conclusion of the walk to Emmaus 
and to the exposition of Scripture in connection with that vision 
and with others provide the real clues as to what happened ; and 
that the repetition by the disciples of that solemn rite and of the 
searchings of prophecy to which Jesus had accustomed them pro- 
duced an atmosphere of tense devotion, and led to their supposing 
that they saw and heard Him. But, if the rigid canons of criticism 
proper to experiences of this kind be applied, the contention loses 


1 Though I think that a simpler reason may be found in the fact that 
St. Luke was a doctor. 


The Appearances of the Risen Lord 305 
\ 


much of its force. “The breaking of bread and the exposition of the \ 


Scriptures provide precisely those links with the context of the 
disciples’ previous life which in parallel cases are regarded as a mark 
of genuineness.1_ The feedings on the hill-side, the Eucharist at 
the Last Supper, the many occasions when they had listened to 
Jesus interpreting the Old Testament in public or in private— 
these experiences had sunk deep into their minds and been the food 
of their constant thoughts, until the shock of the cross had seemed 
to dismiss them as only an idle memory. And so they must have 
remained, had not the events of ‘ the third day ” stimulated them 
afresh into consciousness, not now as a medley of bewildering and 
unrelated ideas, but as a coherent and convincing revelation of 
truth, the answer to a thousand questions. A sound psychology 
will demand a cause for such a mental revolution 2; but, when the 
cause 1s forthcoming, it will see in the features of the narrative— 
the breaking of bread and the exposition of Scripture—symptoms 
of the mind’s working which it knows to be wholly natural. 

2. Still more significant is the way in which the resurrection 
appearances answer to tests of vocational effect. The twice- 
repeated ‘‘ Peace be unto you” prefacing the investiture of the 
disciples with their priestly calling in St. John, the apostolic com- 
mission to preach the gospel recorded in St. Matthew or St. Luke, 
the threefold charge addressed to St. Peter, the words addressed 
to St. Paul at his conversion—all these represent the impression 
made on the minds of the Apostles by these experiences. They 
belong to every strand available in the documentary evidence ; and 
their testimony is unanimous that the visions and locutions which 
the disciples received at this time were vocational. And they pro- 
vide, as nothing else can, an adequate explanation for the fact that 


1 Thus, H. Poincaré says that experiences of the type he describes in his own 
life are not fruitful unless they come as the crown of “ days of voluntary efforts” 
on the subject in hand. 

* It is not perhaps inconceivable that such a revulsion of mind might have 
occurred spontaneously, given sufficient time. But it is asking too much to 
believe that it could have occurred spontaneously within forty-eight hours of 
the crucifixion. And no fact is better attested historically than that the 
change occurred on “‘ the third day.” 

° St. Theresa seems to have come very near to the conception of the sub- 
conscious mind. Speaking of imaginal locutions, she says that ‘ whether 
from the lower or the higher soul, or from outside, these originate from God.” 
She recognises, that is to say, that in these experiences God frequently speaks 
to the soul along the lines of the mind’s natural pre-occupations and ideas. 

x 


i 


306 The Resurrection 


the men of broken faith who forsook their Master in the hour 
of danger went out into the world a few weeks later fearless 
and certain, proclaiming Christ as the Saviour and Judge of 
mankind. 

3. This emphasis on the vocational character of the appearances 
which is so marked a feature of the narratives in the Gospels has 
a direct bearing on the interpretation of the earliest testimony to 
the resurrection, that of St. Paul. The fact that in his first letter 
to the Corinthians St. Paul places the appearance to himself on the 
way to Damascus in the same category as the other appearances 
which he records has long been felt by theologians to present a 
difficult problem ; and criticism has not been slow to suggest that 
St. Paul regarded his own experiences as the norm of the others and 
as having equal evidential value with them for the resurrection 
of Christ. The inference, however, is premature. St. Paul’s 
language undoubtedly requires us to understand that om some plane, 
and in some important respects, his vision and those of the other 
Apostles were strictly parallel and of equal value. But to assume, 
as is commonly done, that he regarded them as of equal value on 
the evidential plane is to jump to unwarrantable conclusions. 
Careful study of the records of the appearances in the Gospels 
suggests, on the other handj that for the Evangelists the vocational 
elements in these experiences were fully as important as the eviden- 
tial : in some they are manifestly predominant. } ‘The appearances 
of Jesus are recorded, that is to say, to account not only for the 
resurrection, but also and equally for the mission of the Apostolate 
and the Christian Church. They are as much the first chapter 
of Church history as the last of the story of the Incarnation. 
What if this be their primary meaning and interest for St. Paul f 
Various considerations make it probable that this was, in fact, the 
case. Histitle to the Apostolate was, as we know, hotly challenged 
at Corinth ; and from the beginning circumstances must have made 
it essential that his position in the Church should be defined 
according to some recognised principle, “he principle chosen was 
the fact that he had seen the Lord. \ His vision, that is to say, 
was accepted by the leaders of the” Church as having the 
same vocational character as that experienced by themselves. } 
And, finally, if we turn again to St. Paul’s words, we find 
them entirely consistent with such a view. Not only does 
he close the chronicle of the appearances with a discussion of 


The Appearances of the Risen Lord 307 


his own title; but the chronicle itself is introduced as though 
it constituted a distinct article of belief} in the Gospel which 
he had received—as distinct from the resurrection as that was 
from the burial, or as the burial was again from the redemptive 
death. Linguistic considerations, that is to say, confirm what we 
have already seen to be probable on other grounds, viz., that the 
appearances, owing to their vocational character, were regarded by 
the early Church as having a credal value independent of their 
testimony to the resurrection. ‘They represent the divine com- 
mission of the Apostolate and the Church ; and in that context 
St. Paul needs to make no discrimination between the various 
appearances which he records. 

4. At the same time, it does not follow that in other respects 
discrimination should not be made; and the testimony of the 
mystical writers suggests that in fact the appearances were not all of 
the same type, even though all were equally veridical. ‘Thus, St. 
Paul’s conversion-experience bears all the marks of an imaginal 
vision. Weare told that a bright light shone round him ; but in 
none of the accounts is it said that he saw the figure of Jesus? ; 
while, on the other hand, the locutions were clear and it was Jesus 
who spoke them. It would, of course, be hazardous to attempt to 
classify the recorded appearances of Jesus with any precision; but it is 
at least possible that some of them were of the same kind as St. Paul’s. 
The story of the walk to Emmaus, again, presents some of the 
characteristics of an intellectual vision ; the emphasis throughout 
is on what the disciples “‘ knew ” rather than on what they saw or 
heard, and the experience is of long duration. This difference of 
character, moreover, might perhaps account for the fact that this 
appearance is ignored by St. Paul. At the same time the evidence 
points clearly in certain cases to the visions and locutions being 
exterior. ‘That to Mary Magdalene was evidently of this type, 
and St. Luke’s narrative implies that the appearance to the Twelve 
on the evening of the first Easter Day was likewise ; for in both 


* Each article is introduced by the conjunction 8+, which is well repre- 
sented by inverted commas in English. Thus St. Paul says his teaching was: 
“ Christ died,” ‘He was buried,” ‘“‘ He rose again,” ‘‘He appeared.” The 
argument is independent of whether or not the “ primitive credo” ends 
with verse 5 ; cf. supra, p. 292. 

* His question, “‘ Have not I seen the Lord?” is none the less fully justified, 
but as an interpretation rather than as a description of his experience. So, too, 
picts ima, SX Tat 


308 The Resurrection 


cases we find the element of mistake which is a characteristic of 
exterior visions. It is probable, also, that the ascension is best 
explained in this way. But the evidence in fact does not admit 
of our speaking with confidence.t ‘There is good reason to suppose 
that the Church at Jerusalem did everything possible to discover 
and to record what took place on each occasion, and this tendency 
must always be set off against any tendency to “ materialise” 
experiences which were essentially part of a mystery. But in any 
circumstances such experiences are difficult to describe with 
accuracy ; and the Apostles had not at hand those principles of 
classification which theology was later to develop. 

Peculiar significance attaches to the appearance to St. Peter. 
Not only does St. Paul place it at the head of his list 5 but St. Luke 
alludes to it in a way that conveys the strongest impression of 
veracity. At the same time, it is nowhere described. Various 
reasons might be conjectured for this, but none is more probable 
than that the experience was in fact indescribable in its clarity and 
power. One is tempted to conjecture that we may have here 
the clue to the abrupt ending of St. Mark’s Gospel. The Pauline 
and Lucan evidence points to the fact that this incident would 
normally have followed next in his narrative. St. Mark may have 
written some account of it, and on further reflection have torn it up 3 
or he may have come to feel, when he reached this point, that he 
could indeed go no further. In either case he might feel loth to 
record any of the other experiences, if he could not record this, the 
chief and most striking of all. “The conjecture is, of course, no 
more than a guess; but it at least absolves us from postulating a 
“lost ending ” for which no evidence exists, and gives a reason for 
the abruptness of the ending that we have.? 

5. The study of the appearances of the risen Lord as mystical 
or vocational experiences of the disciples goes far to mitigate the 
difficulty presented by the discrepancies in the evidence for the 


1 Allowance must also be made for the possibility that the experiences were 
of a “‘ mixed” character ; cf. Thouless, The Lady Fulian, p. 44. 

2 Canon Streeter thinks that the appearance to Peter of which St. Luke 
and St. Paul speak is identical with that described in St. John xxi. This 
seems impossible to reconcile with the time assigned to it by St. Luke and (by 
implication) by St. Paul. Nor is there any difficulty in supposing that there 
was more than one appearance to St. Peter. The Johannine statement that 
the appearance by the Lake was the third appearance #o the disciples seems to 
call for no such elaborate explanation as Canon Streeter gives it. 


The Appearances of the Risen Lord 309 


ascension. In the Acts St. Luke dates the ascension forty days 
after the resurrection! ; but from his Gospel we should gather 
that the story of Christ was complete on the evening of the first 
Easter Day itself ; while St. John gives no account of the ascension 
but suggests that it was closely coincident with the resurrection, 
and that His appearances were manifestations of One whose 
journey to the Father was already advanced beyond the borders 
of time and space.2 The discrepancy becomes less formidable, 
however, in the light of the foregoing discussion, ‘The experience 
known as the ascension will then be regarded as an “ exterior 
vision” from which the disciples learnt that their Lord had 
ascended into heaven. ‘There is no real inconsistency in St. 
Luke. In his Gospel he records those visions and locutions which 
were especially evidential for the resurrection. In the Acts he 
singles out for particular mention that experience which more than 
any other brought home to the disciples the reality and scope of their 
new vocation. In both cases he is serving the purposes he had set 
himself as the historian first of Christ and then of Christ’s Apostles. 
St. John, on the other hand, writing as a theologian with his whole 
attention concentrated upon the Person of the incarnate Son, sees 
nothing in the incident called the ascension which adds or can add 
to men’s knowledge of Him and of His glory. Whatever be the 
process of interior personal change through which the Lord passed 
in His relations with the Father after the resurrection, it was not 
such as could be measured in time. All that could be measured in 
time was the education of the disciples, and he records moments in 
this education and brings out their vocational significance. But 
the Lord whom they see has already resumed the heavenly life 
which He had with the Father before the creation, and it is from 
that mysterious other world that He appears to His Church on 
earth. 


? It is significant that the Epistle of Barnabas implies that the ascension 
took place on a Sunday. 

? Cf. especially St. John xx. 17 (‘‘ Touch me not,” etc.). Few utterances of 
our Lord are more difficult to interpret. But, if the text be right, I should 
paraphrase as follows: ‘‘ The old reserve and detachment which have marked 
our intercourse still hold good: for I am still with you, but not yet in you, 
and my journey is not yet finished. But go and tell my brethren that it is 
ending and I am already ascending, etc.” The present tense &vaBatves, rather 
than &vaBjoouat, is significant. 

° The “element of error” which characterises exterior visions was in this 
case the belief that our Lord was lifted physically from the earth. 


310 The Resurrection 


6. Finally, it may be claimed that consideration of the ap- 
pearances as veridical visions goes some way towards solving the 
problem of where they took place. ‘The problem does not lie 
merely in the fact that St. Matthew and the Johannine appendix 
describe appearances in Galilee, whereas St. Luke restricts them 
severely to Jerusalem and its environs. “That the disciples should 
have journeyed to Galilee and back again to Jerusalem within the 
forty days before the ascension 1s by no means impossible. “The 
real difficulty, however, lies further back, in the meaning of the 
Lord’s promise, “I will go before you into Galilee.” It has been 
observed ! that these words occur at a crucial point in the Marcan 
narrative ; and that, if they were literally meant, they represent an 
anticlimax hard to reconcile with the known principles of our Lord’s 
discourse. It can be shown, moreover, that both to St. Mark and 
to St. Luke they presented a puzzle, which each unravelled in his 
own way. ‘The true clue, however, is provided by St. Matthew 
who, when recording the appearance in Galilee, lays the whole 
emphasis upon the fact that the disciples received from Jesus the 
revelation of His plenary authority and their own world-wide 
commission to the Gentiles. What the Lord had meant by Galilee, 
in short, was contained in the prophet Isaiah’s phrase, “ Galilee 
of the Gentiles” ; it was the symbol of the world waiting to be 
evangelised. “The Lord’s allusion, in fact, was precisely to that 
vocation of the Apostles which, as we have seen, was the main 
meaning of the appearances and caused them to constitute for 
St. Paul almost a distinct article of his creed. 

This does not of itself go very far towards settling the historical 
question as to whether there were appearances in Galilee. But it 
illuminates other evidence which does. We need not suppose that 
the Johannine appendix represents the “ lost ending” of St. Mark 
in order to justify ourselves in giving credence to the tradition of a 
Galilean appearance there embodied ; and the Matthzan record 
of the appearance on the mountain in Galilee has usually been 
regarded as providing the occasion for the appearance, to which 
St. Paul refers, “to five hundred brethren at once.” I do not 


1 By Sir Edwyn Hoskyns, in Theology, vii. 14 ff. I can do no more 
than summarise the arguments and conclusions of that article. ‘The difficulty 
is also faced by Spitta in his Streitfragen der Geschichte fesu 5 cf. Montefiore, 
The Synoptic Gospels, p. 1089. Cf. also Dr. Wade, New Testament History, 


p- 480. 


The Appearances of the Risen Lord 311 


think that we can get rid of the evidence for the occurrence of 
appearances in Galilee. But, if the ascension be interpreted as 
we have interpreted it above, and as apparently St. John interpreted 
it, the discrepancy with the Lucan tradition ceases to be grave. 
The broad difference of character between the Jerusalem and the 
Galilean appearances—the former evidential, the latter vocational 
—s seen to go back to the mind and purpose of our Lord Himself. 
St. Luke is concerned with those appearances whose primary 
meaning lay in their testimony to the Lord’s resurrection. St. 
Matthew, in the majestic conclusion of his Gospel, lays the 
emphasis rather on the world-wide vocation to which the risen 
Lord now called His disciples. “The Fourth Gospel, as its manner 
is, combines the two, and brings out in unmistakable fashion the 
dominant significance of each series. Nor is it difficult to see why 
the second lesson needed different surroundings from the first. 
The vast truth of their vocation which the disciples had to realise 
as implicit in the resurrection was not one that would easily come 
home to them amid the bustling multitudes of the Jewish capital. 
For that, as for the realisation of the fact itself, other influences 
would be needed as well as the words of the risen Lord Himself ; 
and foremost among these would be all the associations of Galilee— 
its memories of earlier missions and commissions, and all that the 
Lord’s teaching and ministry there had made it to mean. Only 
after this lesson had been learnt were the minds of the disciples ripe 
for understanding the truth declared in the ascension, that the 
Lord had indeed entered into His glory.} 

‘To sum up. ‘The study of the appearances of the risen Lord 
as mystical experiences of the disciples is justified by the fact that 
the resurrection was itself a “ mystery,” and that the manifesta- 
tions accompanying it were confined to those whose faith Jesus 
had Himself trained. "The details of the evidence, moreover, con- 
firm the view, which on broad psychological and historical grounds 
is seen to be most probable, that the visions and locutions experienced 


1 The view here advocated suggests a change in the traditional in- 
terpretation of 1 Cor. xv. 7 (toig &mootdédotg m&ow), which is usually 
referred to the ascension. But there appears to be no reason whatever for this 
identification, except the desire to ‘“‘ harmonise” the accounts. The E.V. trans- 
lation of té éxtedpate (1 Cor. xv. 8), “to one born out of due time,” probably 
suggested the idea that St. Paul has in mind the fact that his vision was in the 
period after the ascension. But the word has no note of time about it, and refers 
simply to the suddenness and violence of his conversion. 


RL 2 The Resurrection 


6 


by the disciples—even though in the strict sense “ subjective ”— 
were veridical : for it shows them to be traditional in form and 
vocational in character; and this vocational character is the 
common element in virtue of which St. Paul speaks of all the 
appearances as of the same validity for faith. At the same time 
there are signs that the experiences in question were not all of the 
same type, though all alike were veridical; and the differences re- 
vealed in the narratives, though they may not be pressed, correspond 
in many ways with those clearly distinguished types which are 
familiar to the saints. And, finally, all the appearances, to which- 
ever type they belong, admit readily of the Johannine interpretation 
of the Lord’s risen life, in the sense that they are appearances of 
the heavenly and glorified Christ. What St. Luke records in the 
Acts was that particular vision which taught the disciples what 
they could not have apprehended immediately, that their Lord had 
indeed departed to the Father. “The Galilean appearances were 
concerned to impart a fuller revelation of the resurrection and of 
all that it involved for the universal mission of the Church. 
Before passing on to consider the adequacy of this theory to 
compass the whole faith and fact of the resurrection, it is worth 
while to pause and note how much it involves. Whatever 
philosophy we profess—whether we call the resurrection mystery 
or miracle—we have to recognise that in such a matter as this a 
point must be reached sooner or later where the mind’s progress Is 
arrested in a reverent agnosticism. For believers generally that 
point is reached at a stage further than we have so far travelled ; 
it is reached, that is to say, when we stand by the empty tomb. 
But there are many thoughtful believers to-day who cannot go so 
far, and who halt at the point which our enquiry has now reached. 
‘They do not regard the evidence as certifying us of more than the 
fact that the Lord appeared to His disciples and gave them a clear 
call to work in His behalf. It is desirable, however, that both 
orthodox and modernist should realise how much this belief signifies. 
It signifies accepting as true a number of occurrences or experiences 
which the saints do not hesitate to describe as “ miracles.” It 
involves also accepting them as acts in which God has definitely 
intervened in human experience to reveal and to teach. “These 
acts are interpreted, moreover, in a way which gives to the 
occurrences a profoundly spiritual meaning, and which renders 
irrelevant alike the liberal’s question as to how the risen Lord was 


The Appearances of the Risen Lord 313 


clothed 1 and the traditionalist’s assertion that the earth was lighter 
by so many pounds when the Lord ascended into heaven.2 Finally, 
they are of that transcendent and supra-normal character which 
claims and receives the homage of a man’s whole surrender and 
obedience ; so that those who accept in practical faith this theory 
of veridical visions cannot but commit themselves to that Spirit 
who prompted them and who built upon them the Church of the 
Apostles 


5. Limitations of this Analogy 


Nevertheless, while all this is true, we must face at the sam: 
time the limitations of this faith. In the first place, in so far as it 
is a doctrine of Christ, it is a doctrine of His foundation of the 
Church and of His giving commission to the Apostolate rather than 
of His resurrection from the dead. Noone who seriously believed 
this faith could belittle the Church’s supernatural calling or doubt 
its vocation to holiness or question its title to be the Body of Christ. 
In that sense it exacts a Churchmanship which is unquestionably 
Catholic. But it does not reach by itself to the Catholic belief in 
Christ’s resurrection. It is not in essence the Easter message. 
For that message is first and foremost a message of the Person rather 
than of the doings of the Son of God. It declares something that 
happened to Him as the climax of His human life and death. 


ts primary reference is to His experience, not to the experience, 


tion to the disciples lies a prior mystery concerning only Himself, | 
which others had of Him. Behind the mystery of His new ee 
and the Father and embodying in one signal event the mighty power 
of God. And it is this which is the kernel of the Easter faith. 
Secondly, the act of God involved in the theory of visions is an 
act which determines the future rather than interprets the past. 
But the gospel with which the primitive Church went out into 
the world, though it claimed to represent the authoritative word of 
God and vision of Christ, was first and foremost a gospel of divine 
redress. It was the gospel of the cross, because it was at the same 
time the gospel of the cross’s reversal and transvaluation. It is 
1 Cf. Liberalism in Religion, by the Dean of St. Paul’s. Dr. Wade, in his 
admirable (even if unduly modernist) New Testament History, says, I think, all 
that we need say : “* The details of the Appearances (dress, speech, wounds, etc.) 


were mediated through the memory.” 
2 Cf. Some Loose Stones, by the Rey. R. A. Knox. 


J 


314 The Resurrection 


possible that the appearances alone might have led the disciples to 
infer that their Master had survived death ; but what they said 
was far more than this—they said that He had conquered death. 
This is a belief which quite outranges any doctrine of immortality, 
‘The first Christians believed, as we have seen, that those who died 
before the Lord’s coming were immortal in the sense that they 
survived death ; but they did not say of them that they conquered 
death. “They reaped indeed the benefits of the conquest ; but the 
conquest itself was Christ’s. And the certainty of their faith on 
this point calls for some more substantial ground than was provided 
by the appearances alone. It calls for an act of God in the life of 
Christ which matched at every point the apparent defeat which 
He suffered on the cross. Christ’s conquest of death must be as 
complete, as convincing, as all-embracing as death’s apparent con- 
quest of Him had been. It must extend to every relation of His 
Person which death had touched, and show that at no single point 
was the power of sin and death left in possession of the field.4 

And assurance of that kind is not sufficiently accounted for 
by any theory of visions. ‘There is nothing in the theory which 
conflicts with it, except the claim that it is inadequate. But its 
inadequacy requires us to review the evidence again ; to restore 
the appearances, which we have isolated for a particular purpose, 
to their place in the whole narrative ; and to pick up along with 
them those other strands of testimony which the documents offer 
to our Investigation. 


IV % 
‘THe REsuRRECTION OF CHRIST 


1. Convergent Testimony 


Few facts are more strongly attested by the documentary 
records of the resurrection than that the disciples’ belief in it 
rested in the first instance upon a number of converging lines 


1 Professor Taylor draws my attention to the striking passage on resur- 
rection where Soloviev urges that, unless the physical dissolution of life is reversed 
by resurrection, evil is obviously more potent than good. (Three Dialogues on 
War, Progress, and the End of History, English translation, pp. 162 f.) 


The Resurrection of Christ 215 


of evidence, none of which by itself was convincing. ‘ This is a 
feature of the narratives which is not easy to account for, unless it 
be authentic. It is perhaps intelligible that, if the disciples had 
reached the conviction that Christ was risen simply on the strength 
of the appearances, their belief should have come to embody itself 
in a legend of the grave being empty ; but it is not at all easy to 
believe that a legend of this kind should have presented us with a 
picture of the formation of the conviction so natural, inwardly 
consistent, and free from artifice as that which we have. Such 
evidence is of a high degree of credibility. It is discordant and 
uncertain precisely on those details of time and place which men 
easily forget ; it is harmonious, on the other hand, and coherent on 
that which they most easily remember—namely, the impact of 
great experience on the development of their own minds, And 
when we find this impact varying with different individuals and at 
different moments in the story, and varying in ways which our own 
experience of life shows us to be intrinsically probable, we have a 
right to conclude that our evidence is in close contact with the 
truth, 

Little more need be said here with regard to the appearances. 
The view which regards them as analogous to the mystical experi- 
ences of the saints will seem to some inadequate ; and they will 
prefer to think of the risen Lord “‘as one who no longer felt 
physical obstacles, but who could still submit, if His purpose so 
demanded, to physical conditions.” 1 “The present writer does not 
feel that this doctrine of what one may call occasional externalisa- 
_ tion contains any truth which is absent from the theory of veridical 
visions, while it entails, in his judgment, difficulties of its own, 
and particularly in regard to the ascension. But the conditions 
of our Lord’s risen life are confessedly outside our experience, and 
our interpretation of them cannot be other than partial. In either 
case the question is not so much whether an analogy with mystical 
visions exists, but how far it can be pressed ; and on that issue 
there may well be difference of opinion. 

Mention has already been made of two other factors besides the 

+ Gore, Belief in God, p. 269. Cf. also Dr. Sparrow Simpson, The Resur- 
rection and Modern Thought, p. 418: “ In that glorified body the penetration 
of matter by spirit was so complete that He could at will re-enter into terrestrial 
conditions and become perceptible to the senses of human beings upon earth.” 


Yet I am not sure that this fully represents Dr. Sparrow Simpson’s view on the 
whole. 


316 The Resurrection 


appearances which contributed to the disciples’ conviction of the 
resurrection — the exposition of Scripture and the breaking of 
bread. Both these occur in St. Luke’s narrative of the walk to 
Emmaus ; but it is significant that he does not say that they led 
the two disciples to the inference that Jesus was risen. “The effect 
was to cheer and encourage them with the belief that He was not 
far from them. Other narratives in the Gospels illustrate the 
occurrence further. “Thus, St. Luke records that on one occasion 
Jesus ate before them, in proof that He was not a ghost. “The 
silence of St. John on this incident, though otherwise he records 
the appearance, suggests that St. Luke is recording a version of an 
act which was in reality of a piece with that at Emmaus 1}; and the 
narrative in the Johannine appendix points to a similar experience. 
What would appear probable is that the solemn distribution of food, 
recalling the mysterious feedings on the hill-sides and still more the 
rite at the Last Supper, was used by the risen Lord as a means of 
recognition. 

Not less striking is the part played by the exposition of Scripture. 
‘¢ Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the 
way, and opened to us the scriptures ? ”—there we seem to have a 
glimpse of a real experience often repeated since in the story of the 
Church. Both St. Luke and St. John in different ways point to 
the fact that the understanding of Scripture played an essential 
part in the formation of the resurrection faith. St. John records 
as exceptional the fact that the beloved disciple believed in the 
resurrection on the strength of the empty tomb alone, seeing that 
he and St. Peter “as yet . . . knew not the scripture, that He 
must rise again from the dead.” St. Luke narrates in connection 
with the appearance to the Eleven and their commission on the 
first Easter evening a repetition of the exposition of prophecy which 
was so signal a feature of the walk to Emmaus. And _ both 
Evangelists are recording a feature of the disciples’ experience at 
this time which the severest critic must submit to be intrinsically 
probable. For it is not the kind of fact which the weavers of 
legend, eager for miracle, would have any interest in recording. 
On the contrary, it supplies a link in the evidence which shows the 


1 St. John xx. 20 contains an allusion to Jesus showing His hands and His 
side—language which the writer of the Fourth Gospel might well use, if he 
had in mind the Eucharistic rite. The incident belongs to the appearance 
recorded in Luke xxiv. 36-43 and John xx. 19-25. 


The Resurrection of Christ Baa ki 


disciples to have been reasonable men. The fact of the resurrec- 
tion, that is to say, despite its external attestation, was not faith for 
them, until it had been integrated with the rest of their religious 
life. For this life the Scriptures had a peculiar authority, second 
only to the words of the Lord Himself. Only when they saw that 
the cross and the resurrection were the fulfilment of prophecy 
could they fully believe that Christ had risen from the dead. 

Once more, this emphasis on the understanding of Scripture 
has a close bearing on the adequacy of the theory of visions. For, 
if the visions of Jesus rather than the empty tomb were the 
decisive factor in the formation of the disciples’ faith, we should 
suspect that the parts of Scripture now unveiled would have 
reference to them. We should expect St. Paul to say that Jesus 
“ appeared” “according to the Scriptures,” as he said this of the 
death and the resurrection ; and there were many passages in the 
Psalms and the Prophets which he and the Evangelists could have 
cited, But neither in St. Paul nor in the Gospels is the exposition 
of Scripture given any bearing whatever upon the appearances. 
They lie side by side as collateral evidences to a great fact other 
than themselves, for which the main evidence was of a different 
character. 


2. The Empty Tomb 


We come, therefore, finally to that evidence which was 
regarded by the primitive Church and has been regarded ever since, 
as the principal guarantee for Christ’s resurrection—I mean, the 
empty tomb. It is no exaggeration to say that, so far as the 
documentary evidence is concerned, no fact recorded in the New 
Testament is better attested than this. Not only is St. Mark’s 
narrative available here to confirm those of St. Paul and of the later 
Evangelists ; but the discovery is told with a directness and simpli- 
city which seem to be the echo of the eyewitnesses themselves. It 
is reasonable that those who reject the entire Gospels as historically 
valueless should reject this testimony too; but to accept them 
generally as good sources of historical information and yet to refuse 
to follow them on this point argues an apriorismand an arbitrariness 
in dealing with evidence which is an affront to scientific method. 

It is not surprising, therefore, that contemporary criticism 
should concentrate rather on accounting for the grave being 


318 The Resurrection 


empty than on questioning whether or not it was so. Various 
theories have been advanced on this score. “The earliest, VIZ., 
that the disciples secured the Lord’s body by stealth, is no more 
credible to-day than it was when the first Evangelist wrote his 
Gospel. Nor can we attach credence to the view that the Jews 
themselves removed the body ; for, had they done so, they could 
have nipped Christianity in the bud by avowing the fact when the 
resurrection was first preached. Insurmountable difficulties, in 
fact, attend any theory which attributes the removal of the body 
either to the devotion of friends or to the malice of enemies. And 
the same difficulties really attach, though at a stage further on, to 
the view that “the Romans, fearing a public disturbance, took 
advantage of the Sabbath quiet to remove the body.” 1 For it is 
incredible that the Lord’s disciples and friends should have been 
the only persons interested in the grave and likely to visit it. Even 
if we reject the intrinsically probable statement of Matthew that 
the Jewish leaders asked for and obtained a guard, we may be 
perfectly certain that they would not leave the grave entirely 
unvisited and unwatched, at least by day ; and it could not have 
been long before they too were asking the question as to why it was 
empty. Had Roman soldiers removed the body, or had such a 
statement had the slightest foundation in fact, the Jews must have 
given it currency, and the Romans would have had good cause to 
encourage the notion. ‘The saying, still current when the first 
Gospel was written, that the disciples removed the body by stealth 
represents in fact the bankruptcy of all attempts on the part of the 
Jews to suggest any other explanation. 

The truth is that the empty tomb presents the mind with one 
of those issues where the decision is made at a deeper level of 
personality than that which is concerned simply with the weighing 
of historical evidence. Ifa man follows the evidence so far as to 
envisage the empty tomb but then deserts it for pure hypothesis, 
it is because he is drawn aside by other than historical considera- 
tions. It is because he has been overcome by that arrested wonder 
which underlies all serious agnosticism. And the effect of the 
empty tomb is either to arrest wonder or to expand it.0.0) Dineriaase 
with us who study the evidence is the reverse of what it was with 
the first witnesses. We first satisfy ourselves as to the appearances 
of the Lord, and find our wonder expanding as we do so, until it 


1 Canon Streeter, in Foundations, p. 134. 


The Resurrection of Christ 319 


comes either to arrest or to yet further expansion at the empty 
tomb. ‘The first disciples begin to wonder when they hear of 
the empty tomb. Mary’s first impulse is one of dismay : “They 
have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre and we know not 
where they have laid him.” Peter and John run to verify the 
tidings ; and, though for the beloved disciple wonder at the state 
of the grave ripens swiftly then and there into faith, Peter departs 
“ wondering in himself at that which was come to pass.” The 
two disciples walking to Emmaus have heard that the grave is 
empty, but can only find in it matter for astonishment. Only 
when the Lord has appeared decisively and when Scripture has been 
added to interpret their experience—only then does the first wonder 
expand into faith and adoration. Nevertheless, for us as for them 
the full truth of the resurrection requires each strand of the three- 
fold cord of evidence for its apprehension. It requires the ap- 
pearances as the basis of a transcendent vocation deriving from 
the risen Lord ; it requires Scripture as the bond which links the 
resurrection with the cross in one redemptive Gospel ; it requires 
the empty tomb as the great pledge that death has indeed been 
conquered. 

The reality to which the evidence thus points is of an order 
beyond our comprehension. Reason can estimate the evidence ; 
but when that is done, it must make way for other functions of the 
mind—for constructive imagination, for wonder, and for faith. 
What is involved is such a change in the body of Jesus as takes it 
out of the category of things to which the laws of natural science 
apply, and sets it in a relation to experience, both His and ours, to 
which we know no parallel. Various terms have been coined to 
describe it, such as sublimation or etherealisation ; but these are no 
more than symbols of our ignorance and wonder. Wedo not know 
what are the potentialities of matter when indwelt by the soul of 
the Son of God, though we can well believe that in such a case itis 
exempt from the sentence of corruption. What faith claims is that, 
in embodying the manhood of God Incarnate, the whole course 
of physical evolution reached its highest destiny, and through the 
conquest of death passed over into forms of energy as yet unguessed. 
Into the mystery of that mode of being only the heart of the 
worshipper can penetrate ; and its only language when it does so is 
that of St. Thomas, My Lorp anp my Gop. 


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THE SPIRIT AND THE CHURCH 
IN HISTORY 
BY ERIC MILNER-WHITE 


CONTENTS 


I. Tue DisTINCTIVENESS OF THE Cuurcu In History DUE TO 
1Ts PossEssioN OF SPIRIT t : : f : 


Il. Tue DeveLopMENT OF THE Cyurcu In HisTory PROGRES- 
SIVELY REVEALS ITS SPIRIT AS Hoty Spirit : ; 


Ill. Tue Wrrness or Historica ACHIEVEMENT TO THE CLAIM 
OF THE CHURCH . . ! , : ; } 


IV. Movern Periops oF DECADENCE AND REVIVAL; AND OF 
INTELLECTUAL STRESS AND PROGRESS . 5 : : 


V. Tue Catuotic CuurcH A SACRAMENT OF Hoty Spirit TO 
tHE WoRrLD y ‘ : § : ; : 


PAGE 


473 


326 


33° 


334 


339 


I 


THE DIsTINcTIVENESS OF THE CHURCH IN Hisrory DUE 
TO ITS PossEss1Ion OF SPIRIT 


Tue Church is a nation without race, without boundaries, 
with no common language or courts of law, without army or 
fleet. Yet it is never treated as of no account. States and men 
may love or hate, they cannot ignore it. Its bonds of unity, 
even in outward disunion, constantly prove to be tougher than 
ties of tongue and kindred ; its boundaries are neverat any moment 
settled, and claim indeed to extend beyond the visible world. 
Though without arms, it is always at war ; though without 
codes, courts and police, its moral ideal is in all quarters of the 
world heroic ; and in practice the heights of moral beauty are 
its common fruit. For it has a spirit, 

The spirit, whatever it be, which thus binds and inspires 
this supernational body calls for serious consideration merely 
on account of its obvious achievements. F irst, because it has 
brought so large and lasting a people into existence. Since that 
baptismal Day of Pentecost the world has seen many empires 
of colossal strength shiver and sink, many changes of catastrophic 
importance to the development of man, much increase of know- 
ledge with consequences subtle, profound, bewildering. Yet this 
peculiar people has not only survived, but has driven its founda- 
tions deeper with every change : it has not merely kept together a 
remnant living on the tradition of ancient faith and fame, but has 
increased with every century, gathering in recruits by the brilliant 
newness of an old appeal. ‘The peoples enter it because it gives 
life. “The empires, armed and coherent, fall; the Church, 
by human standards incoherent and weaponless, stands. "The 
mystery of its survival is at least a title to respect ; it is the body 
which first claims investigation if we would investigate the eternal 
in human affairs. 

Not less mysterious is the influence of this spiritual nation 
upon the individuals of its obedience. Here almost all analogy 


324 The Spirit and the Church in Htstory 


to the secular state ceases. And if we turn to other faiths and 
philosophies, comparison again is difficult, simply because these 
too have proved mortal. Faiths have perished in their hundreds 
and philosophies in their thousands. They were influential, but 
only for a day and days. But the Church lives and grows, 
commanding a devotion which is both passionate and steady. Its 
liveliest rival is Mohammedanism ; yet here Christianity has 
nothing to fear in depth or quality of influence, or in appeal to 
the higher intellect, or in moral achievement. Its “spirit” 
is a superior one, or a loftier, fuller, manifestation of the same. 

Observe the intensity, steadiness, and range of this influence. 
Unlike the impulses of patriotism which awake suddenly at crisis, 
and, when it is over, doze again, the inspiration of the Church 
presses more or less evenly upon its members throughout all the days 
of their conversion. It is not evoked from without at any special 
danger, but works from within, in the daily aspiration of heart 
and mind, and the efforts of an abiding devotion. ‘Temper is 
tuned, selfishness purged, suffering transfigured, diverse purpose 
unified, all the variations of daily experience made to contribute 
to wealth of character, and the peace of active charity. “There 
appears to be no kind of temperament, no rank of life, no difference 
of circumstance or intellect or ability or race or civilisation, 
which this influence cannot grip and bless. And it is true to 
say that to the individual its onset comes always as a surprise, 
an ever new thing to man despite its frequency amongst men, a 
welcome thing despite its disturbing nature—a witness at least 
to the general sense that it comes from without. 

Over and beyond the force with which it wakes the indi- 
vidual and changes his life, it has extended its moral and ethical 
ideals over the peoples most conspicuous for progress, civilisation, 
and power ; and all attempts to break from these seem to end in 
weariness and failure, sometimes, as in the German following 
of Nietzsche, in world-disaster. “The noble pagan of to-day cannot 
but live, up to a point, by the ethical teaching of Christ’s Church, 
lest he fall below the highest standard he meets. Christian char- 
acter is an argument impossible to ignore; to be answered, as it 
is propounded, only in terms of living. The search for a superior 
ethic has conspicuously failed. “The best and most thoughtful 
non-believers, therefore, submit to Christian influence in the 
sphere of living where they do not in the sphere of thought. “The 


Distinctiveness of the Church in History 325 


history of Western civilisation is inextricably bound up with the 
steady establishment of a less imperfectly Christian ethic, and 
the East begins to move uneasily to the same stimulus. Apart 
then from any question of the truth of Christianity, the Christian 
ideal of actual living has a living influence, and is to some extent 
effective outside the converted, beyond the Church’s nominal 
adherents. “That is to say, the spirit which is the bond and in- 
spiration of the Church itself, does a work through it which is 
indisputably important to the whole world. 

Nobody wishes to pretend that even the best lives of Christians, 
much less their actual average standard, approach the ideal of 
the Church Catholic. But the ideal, which is to be “‘ like Christ,” 
‘*to be conformed to His image,” “‘ to abide in Him and Hein us,” 
‘to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect,’ has never for 
one instant ceased to be presented to its members ; and the pattern 
of the Head has produced in every generation not a handful 
but hundreds of acts and lives of a heroic virtue. The great 
merciful activities which the sympathy of the Church first found 
to do, the abolition of slavery, the institution of hospitals,! the 
raising of the status of women, the zeal for education when none 
other cared, have now passed into the very fabric of Western 
civilisation. But it is seldom noted that even now the hardest 
works of mercy are still left to those whose devotion to Christ 
provides them both with the perseverance for the task and with 
the readiness to remain unknown and obscure in the doing of it. 
‘The worst wreckage of indulgence and sin can still be dealt with 
only by the Church’s Homes of Mercy. The educational and 
medical care of backward races is left to the Christian missionary. 
The bulk of such social work as is unpaid and voluntary is done 
demonstrably by people who “go to church.” And though in 
sentiment most people desire social reform, it is still only the 
minister of Christ and his little band of helpers who live in the 
midst of the conditions which others lament. 

‘Then what is the claim of the Church? Does it match 
these facts? From so potent and deathless an empire, we should 
expect high claims; and find them. ‘This, we are told, is the 


1 ‘The Church was not the inventor of the hospital any more than our Lord 
was the inventor of the name “ Father”’ for God. But Christianity at once 
transformed human thought and practice by raising the care of the sick to the 
plane of essential religious and civic duty. 


326 The Spirit and the Church in History 


people of the Eternal God, the fellowship of His incarnate Son, 
inspired and guided by His very Spirit, a holy priesthood, steward 
of the mysteries and dispenser of the gifts of God’s love, of the 
forgiveness of sins, of a new life in grace and of a communion 
with God which will develop and deepen world without end. 

It is to the examination and explanation of this claim that 
the rest of this essay must be devoted. “The sins of the Church 
must of course be thrown in against the achievements; the 
achievements be regarded more carefully to see if they correspond, 
and how they correspond, to the claim ; and whether they justify 
it. We must start with the premise (surely indisputable) that 
there is a spirit within the Church—a unique and remarkable 
spirit—which gives it aim, character, force, indestructibility, and 
essential unity ; but is it Ao/y spirit, the Spirit of God ¢ 


Gt 


Tur DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHURCH IN HISTORY PRO- 
GRESSIVELY REVEALS ITS Spirit AS Hoty SPIRIT 


The Church of God on any showing existed before the coming 
of Christ. He indeed was born into it. The Jewish race had 
long been conscious of itself as what we should now call a Church. 
This sense was denied to other peoples, whose development, if 
under the guidance of God, was so unconsciously. “The Hebrew 
people may have been mistaken, but their literature puts their con- 
viction of special privilege beyond all possible doubt. And their 
history corresponds impressively to the conviction. Never did 
a folk so feeble, with a history so chequered, and situation and 
politics so impossibly difficult, give such gifts to the world. “hey 
were gifts to the spiritual development of mankind, and to nothing 
else at all. We cannot even date the Church’s birth ; like the 
mysterious Melchizedec, it is without descent, having neither 
beginning of days, nor end of life. Whether the call of Abraham 
be history or legend, it bears undeniable witness to a sense of special 
vocation and divine guidance, implanted at an early date in this 
obscure Semitic tribe. No one can mistake that it was this sense, 
pressing invisibly and perpetually over long spaces of time, which 
gave the race its peculiar tenacity, and explains its strange line of 
development. The story of Abraham is a parable of the early 


Development of the Church in History 327 


stages of a profound religious growth. With the awakening 
of vocation in man and race it embodies also the discovery of 
monotheism, the conception of a moral God who demanded 
faith, the sacrifice of mind and heart, rather than the cruel sacrifices 
of fear; who punished the guilty, but whose righteousness the 
righteous man could approach for lavishness of mercy. In that 
undated dawn, and in silent ways, a new spirit entered earth 
and was comprehended ; without doubt, a higher spirit than 
prevailed elsewhere, a spirit of higher truth. 

Thenceforward the Hebrew people had a sacramental value 
to the world. It neither posed nor presumed ; it did not try to 
teaca other peoples, but itself was taught. Like any naughty 
schoolboy, it hated rather than liked its lessons, and rebelled 
against its teachers, yet consistently it learned. It thought that 
it learned for itself, a learning real and long and hard enough ; 
but time has shown that its learning was a deeper thing, for the 
whcle world, a learning sacramental, almost vicarious, still of 
fundamental value. Under Moses and Joshua, the sense of divine 
guidance grew unescapable. Jehovah was their own, as other 
gods belonged to other races; but how different He! At the 
same time, the acceptance of the primitive law marked a further 
inflow of spirit, and involved both a clearer definition of God and 
a new conscience towards Him : His moral demand became the 
first obligation both of state and individual. “he code has never 
gone wholly out of date in so far as the duty towards God and 
neighbour has become the foundation of almost universal morality. 
Again then, a spirit of truth entered, worked within and issued 
forth from an insignificant race, which claimed a particular 
character for God, and a particular vocation from Him ;_ which 
in the face of constant distress it held fast and finally delivered 
to mankind, 

‘The vocation was deepened and fostered by the line of Hebrew 
prophets. There has never been in history a phenomenon more 
remarkable, nor one which bears so easily the appearance of an 
irruption of spirit. About the prophets’ own interpretation 
of themselves there is no doubt at all. ‘‘ Thus saith the Lord,’ 
they cry. “They stand between Yahwe and His people, convey 
His reproofs and encouragements, expound His character and 
demands, discern His will and intentions. “They do not address 
themselves to the individual, but to the nation. It is to a national 


328 The Spirit and the Church in History 


conscience, to the Church, that they appeal. And the God 
Whom they represent is a moral personality, “inexorable in His 
requirement of a righteousness corresponding to His own.” From 
this standpoint, unparalleled in that age, they could develop their 
doctrines of sin, of suffering, of responsibility national and indi- 
vidual, of a Messiah to come, of the triumph of the Kingdom of 
God, carrying them to new spiritual heights, and driving them 
into the consciousness of the nation-church, so that they became 
an abiding possession on the earth. 

So remarkable a phenomenon indeed is this, both in content 
and persistence, that questioning minds of the capacity of Bishop 
Gore’s have seen here a foundation powerful enough on which 
to base their faith in God. Such glory and power belong to the 
pre-Christian Church of God even in these most modern days. 
It is therefore fair to say that the Old Testament Church, the 
elect race, has been to the world sacramental, not only of a mono- 
theistic creed, but also of the development of man on his spiritual 
side, in his spiritual character. Salvation came indeed of the 
Jews; and every step of their spiritual progress has been sacra- 
mental of that world-salvation. ‘Through them, what we may 
now call Holy Spirit has entered the world in ever greater degree, 
as a living and abiding force, its own evidence and its own gospel. 

— Entered the world and secured permanence through an organ- 
isation, an institution bounded and disciplined, not primarily by law 
or doctrine, but by race. Holy Spirit came by a people. This 
is not to say, that the Spirit of God worked only in Israel. He 
worked and works throughout His own poem of creation. But 
in Israel His life was concentrated, confined, guarded, fostered 
in an institution dominated by that vocation only. To Israel 
He came expressly as Captain of the Lord’s host, and pre-eminently 
through His own host He revealed Himself to the nations of 
men. If the host had failed . . . but it did not. It ought to 
have failed by all human chances ; except for this single pertinacity, 
its history was ignominious ; but the call of God was without 
repentance ; the most feeble folk persisted by the Spirit that 
was with it and in it. 

John, the last prophet, was followed immediately by the Christ, 
and a new revelation, too large to be confined any longer to one 
race, overturned the old barriers and spread north, south, east, 
and west. It overleapt the barriers not only of race, but even of 


Development of the Church in History 329 


death, by the rising of Jesus from the dead. “The new covenant 
did not destroy, but fulfilled the old : and what had been racial 
became universal. It was part of Christ’s declared gospel that 
it should. It was not part of Christ’s gospel that His adherents 
should lose their cohesion. On the contrary, He conceived 
their new unity as more august and absolute than anything earth 
had seen or prophets dreamed—akin to and partaking of the very 
unity of the Godhead. Both in their writings and actions His 
immediate followers stressed this character of the new ecclesia. 
St. Paul spent his active life in tearing down the middle wall of 
partition, and building the new fellowship that should know no 
distinction of race or class. ‘To his writings the Church ts a 
most glowing inspiration, no mere organisation or propagandist 
machine, but a new race, a new kingdom, the very Body of Christ. 
St. Peter’s description is not dissimilar nor less lyrical: “* Ye are 
an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s 
own possession.”” “The sense of the vocation of the holy nation 
was not less because it now ceased to be identified with Israel 
after the flesh, but infinitely greater. “The stress upon its unity, 
now that it was changed from a unity of blood to one of spirit, 
was infinitely exalted. With the new revelation, the task of 
the elect race was more clearly seen and understood, and the 
new power which had come into the world for its fulfilment 
was recognised, palpably felt, personified and named the Holy 
Ghost. ‘These things only enhanced the distinctiveness of God’s 
people. They peculiarly possessed His Spirit, and were peculiarly 
knit by it. They felt a divine responsibility, a vocation, as a 
body. So much is a mere matter of history. It is matter of 
history also that the consciousness of fellowship and vocation 
drove them by successive steps into a definite, though loose, 
outward organisation : it is indeed hard to see what else could 
have happened, considering the extraordinary nature of the 
ministries which Christians felt bound to share amongst themselves 
and to give to the world. The process began with the Founder 
Himself, who made deliberate choice of twelve apostles. “The 
apostles took their duty of ordering the new society outwardly 
as seriously as any other of their responsibilities : there is no 
more sacerdotal writing in existence than the very first chapter 
of the Acts. The rest of the book continues the tale of the 
establishment of the new race. The worst difficulty was faced 


330 The Spirit and the Church in History 


at once and marvellously overcome—the breaking down of the 
barrier between Jew and Gentile. No power on earth could hold 
up a Spirit capable of that. Nobody imagines that the original 
leaders, Peter, James, or Paul, wholly understood what they 
were doing, or laid the conscious plans of politicians which always 
prove so vain. But they felt the inspiration of a mighty cause of 
God, which demanded unremitting propaganda, and which not 
only required unity in the inspired fellowship, but made it. The 
unity of Christ’s fellowship was indeed to be, as He intended, 
utter ; to be expressed not only by outward organisation and not 
only by inward love, but in both and all ways. It should have 
no boundaries which could cramp expansion, such as race, or 
which could limit the free flow of Christ’s spirit, such as a law ; 
and yet it must draw bold the lines which should define and pro- 
claim its revelation, simple boundaries of belief and discipline 
and outward order, alike the guarantees of its reality as a fellow- 
ship or kingdom, and the visible, audible expression of its sacra- 
mental vocation to a non-Christian world. 

Since then, nineteen hundred years have rolled by; time 
sufficient, surely, to judge how this fellowship, the Church, has 
performed its function ; and whether we can with any certainty 
detect the divine guidance and relationship which it claims, and 
with any reasonableness yield it allegiance. 


II] 


THe Witness or Hisrorrca, ACHIEVEMENT TO THE 
CLAIM OF THE CHURCH 


In the first place, the New Race has shown, on a more am- 
bitious field, that remarkable characteristic of the old, indestructi- 
bility. It has had a no less stormy passage through time. The 
armed tribes and empires over the little Hebrew boundaries 
gave place to the criticism of the whole world, and every known 
weapon, fair and unfair, of thought and word and deed. No 
institution on earth has sustained such constant attacks from 
without and betrayals within—and the Judas works always more 
havoc than the Caiaphas. Yet so far from showing signs of 
disappearing with its day, unexpected resources have again and 


The Witness of Historical Achievement 331 


again turned the worst moments of apparent failure into a new 
era of growth. Indestructibility may not be an argument for 
faith, but it is for reverence, and for serious study of the principle 
which secures a life so unique. For this survival has not been 
that of a fortress standing foursquare and uncaptured ; but that 
of an army with banners, moving, advancing, ubiquitous ; in- 
creasing ever, not in mere numbers—though, without the witness 
of missionary pertinacity, the case for the Church would be 
weaker—but in the width and depth of its spiritual message and 
in the purity of its moral ideal. Just as the Jewish race developed 
in largeness of faith and hope, so the Christian ; often enough, too, 
like the Jewish, through its sorrows and failures. ‘The truths 
on which, historically, it was founded, have proved themselves 
to be ceaselessly and vigorously dynamic, and capable of boundless 
expansion and applicability without any loss of either simplicity 
or definiteness. “They do not grow out-of-date. The noblest 
livers need them. Mohammedanism asa faith is static ; Buddhism 
and Hinduism as certainly retrograde, despite spasmodic efforts 
of moral and theological reform in places where they are face 
to face with Christianity : the situation in India, indeed, vividly 
resembles the conflict of religions in the later Roman Empire. 
The Christian explosive shatters every civilisation which it enters, 
making way for one based on higher sanctions. Before the 
war of 1914 it had become a popular article of faith that civilisation 
in itself was progressive. If men are wiser now, they have no 
yet grasped the truth which gave rise to that easy philosophy 
that in a Christian civilisation the Christian motive present is 
regarded broadly, always progressive. Its own swift motion, 
indeed, creates more difficulties for Christianity than the attacks 
of allits foes. “The army is frequently terrified at the far-marching 
of its pioneers, and would cling to ancient bivouacs. Yet onward 
it goes, not by virtue of the courage or generalship of its earthly 
chiefs, nor yet by the often ill-directed ardour of its warriors 3 
but by something implicit in its nature, some irresistible yearning 
towards more perfect achievement and more profound interpre- 
tation, some persevering disgust with things that are; in fact, by 
the drive of Holy Spirit. 

The impressiveness of this impulse gains in force when we 
turn from its general movement in time to its particular influence 
on individuals. Inspiration is a common experience beyond 


332 The Spirit and the Church in History 


any conceivable bound of the Catholic Church or of conscious 
religion. “The poet, the musician, the artist, the thinker know 
it well, ‘That does not alter the facts that the Church is the 
very home of spiritual experience ; that its life consists primarily 
in such purely spiritual energies as prayer; that it, alone of 
institutions on earth, proposes to guide, heal, and perfect the soul. 
However Christians may live in practice, they never cease to be 
urged to unselfishness, humility, and love as their first glory. 
The love, labours, and lowliness of the Crucified stand ever 
before their eyes ; union and communion with Him is their single 
goal. And in millions, some greatly, some slowly and partially, 
they respond. ‘The true history of the Church has never been 
written in human book, ‘and never will be ; for it has taken place 
not in courts, curias, and councils where power is great and 
decisions are registered, but in cottages, streets, and places where 
men work and pray. Its spiritual fervour issues in the preaching 
and practising of good morals, blazes forth in conversions, mounts 
to God by a ceaseless series of heroisms, which are often more 
than martyrdoms, just because they are secret and humble and 
new every morning. 

‘The Church has no monopoly of such high and holy spirit ; 
but it exists for it and illustrates it, not at intervals or by chance, 
but constantly ; and thereby is a sacrament of Holy Spirit, per- 
petually reserved, daily reconsecrated, in a selfish and material 
world. Because of the Church, the standards of mankind are 
doomed ever to be faced by the standards of the saints, and are 
forced to some measure of imitation, lest inferiority of fruits 
reveal too clearly inferiority of truth. 

‘The inspiration of the Church has proved strong enough 
to alter the course of history, more profoundly than is often 
appreciated, by its production of the Christian character. And 
that brings us to the phenomenon of Christian missions. There 
are three sides of this strange and constant energy to emphasise. 
The first is the obvious one of “ foreign” missions. Christianity 
is not, of course, the only missionary religion, but it is the most 
missionary, and the only one which seems to appeal to all peoples— 
white, yellow, brown, and black. Nineteen hundred years have 
not exhausted the impulse ; on the contrary, it has never been 
more eager than it is now : the last century has seen more devotion 
and wealth put into missionary effort than any period in history : 


The Witness of Historical Achievement 333 


and the success rivals the sacrifice. But, again, not only is 
Christianity the most missionary of faiths, but it has the most 
enduring results to its credit. It began with the conversion of 
Southern Europe, passing on to the North and West. ‘The 
consequence in every case has been the establishment and rapid 
growth of what we call civilisation. Civilisation! is primarily 
a growth in love and goodness, in wisdom and truth of outlook : 
the increase of mercy and opportunities for education alike are 
inevitable, when the love of Christ, and of the neighbour for 
whom He died, becomes the most solemn duty of men. In 
the missionary work which often seems so inexplicable and ill- 
judged to the modern Englishman, the Church seeks to do for 
African, Polynesian, and Asiatic what once it did for Saxon and 
Frank. And the task has an urgency now which is new in 
history. For the less advanced races suffer bitterly from the 
impact of the developed civilisation of the West : they are wholly 
at its mercy even when it wants to be disinterested and benevolent 
(which is, again, only the case where Christian sanctions are 
strong): they cannot appropriate its virtues without a long training 
in morality, and an education, practical and spiritual, in wholly 
new categories. But its vices are easy to adopt: there is no 
doubt that without the faith of the West many races would perish 
by its sins. And as it is only the Christian ethic, however im- 
perfect, of their rulers which saves them from the worst forms of 
exploitation, so it is only the Christian missionaries, those un- 
modern moderns who, for love of Christ, marry poverty, loneliness, 

1 The writer can give no meaning to the word civilisation which is barren 
of moral and spiritual content. Of course civilisations may degenerate and 
fall; for the very gains and graces of living originally inspired by moral 
advance, and inevitably attendant upon it, may grow rank and abuse the soil 
from which they sprang. That moral decay time and again sets back civilisa- 
tion is only proof of the necessity of moral vigour and ideal to advance it. 
Herein lies the world-importance of the Church’s power of revival, mentioned 
later in the essay. It is the best, perhaps the only, guarantee of progress which 
mankind possesses. Recent events have only shown the incapacity of intellectual 
advance as a guarantee, apart from moral. But the “ divine discontent ” and 
the unflagging hope of the Church must for ever climb ; the Body which exists 
to realise the perfection of Christ cannot be content with the moral conscience 
of any moment of its past, even the fairest. It looks back to no golden age. 
It does gaze continually on Jesus Christ, and does take courage from the 
achievement of individual saints,—but only that it may reach forward. This 
spirit is now within civilisation, and its surest hope: there is no precedent for 


its final failure yet !—what it has done in less than 2000 years is marvellous 
enough in our eyes. 


334. The Spirit and the Church in History 


and exile, who can and do give them the long, patient teaching, 
and the moral discipline, which is the hope of their future. 

‘The third side of this missionary ardour of the Church has 
been less noticed, but is not less valuable as witness of the impulse 
of Holy Spirit. The only weapon of propaganda is persuasion. 
It has taken the Church, indeed, a long time to understand its 
only allowable method, the Spirit of a God who is Love, and the 
example of the Christ who never used force. ‘There is no love 
in haste, and only a curse in force. Men find it hard ever to 
forgive the use of force by the Church, and their instinct is right. 
‘The regimentation of the Church of Rome even now governs 
disastrously the popular conception of the Catholic Church, 
since it suggests the atmosphere of compulsion, the use of force, 
or the loss of freedom in that which claims and means to be the 
very Body and organ of love and spiritual liberty. But in reality 
force has played a very small part, less perhaps than no part at all, 
in the expansion of Christianity. Even the words and teachings 
of missionaries have accomplished little enough, apart from the 
lives behind them. Alike the spread, the maintenance and the 
growth within Christian countries of Christianity has been due 
to the persuasion of Christ-like lives. "The witness therefore 
of missions to the presence of Spirit within the Church does not 
rest merely upon the pertinacity of a peculiar and unworldly 
vocation amongst men, or upon the results to converted nations, or 
upon the constant expansion of the Body of Christ ; it rests still 
more upon the amazing phenomenon of lives that are different, 
of men who never teach and preach, it may be, by word of mouth, 
but who convert, simply by means of the beauty and power of 
the Spirit that is in them. 


La 


Mopern Perrops oF DrecapENcE AND REVIVAL; AND 
OF INTELLECTUAL STRESS AND PROGRESS 


The drive of the Spirit within the Body has in the fields of 
character and propaganda been constant. But there are other 
fields in which to the modern mind it does not seem so true. In 
the first place, some of the Christian centuries or generations 
in Europe have been not only stagnant but decadent ; and secondly, 


Modern Periods of Decadence and Revival 335 


when new truth, especially scientific truth, has emerged, the 
fiercest resistance to it seems to have proceeded from the citadels 
of organised religion. ‘These objections to “ institutional religion” 
weigh heavily to-day ; the modern man has come to confound 
orthodoxy with obscurantism ; and to regard the Catholic Church, 
the admitted centre and strength of the Christian world, as a foe to 
intellectual freedom and to the discovery of truth. 

It is not enough to urge that the primary duty of the Church 
is to conserve its revelation in its completeness and purity for 
the benefit of all, and to sift and test the spirits carefully and long 
before they are admitted to the rank of divinity. Admittedly 
there have been periods when general Christian standards have 
been low, and the authorities of the Church a byword of reproach. 
We need do no more than point to the fourteenth and fifteenth 
centuries before, and the eighteenth century after the Reformation. 
In the former period, the corruption at the headquarters of the 
Western Church can hardly be exaggerated, and it infected the 
whole with malign disease. Yet, paint we never so darkly the 
papal leadership and morals, the Catholic community never stayed 
quiet under the scandal. The voice of protest and appeal rose 
loud. Sometimes it was the voice of states, seeking to safeguard 
themselves against this bewildering, degenerate power, in claim so 
supernatural, in practice so mercenary and unholy ; and the methods 
of reform by general councils, and by emphasis upon the indepen- 
dence of the National Church, declared themselves, as at Basle 
and in Gallicanism. Sometimes it was the voice of a single 
prophet of reform, a Wycliffe, a Hus, a Wessel, a Savonarola, 
an Erasmus. At no time did the humbler and more persuasive 
speech of saint and mystic falter, of Catherine and Bernardino, 
both of Siena, of the German mystics and the Dutch schoolmasters, 
of Thomas 4 Kempis. Fresh springs of devotion were many, 
piety deep, in the century before the Reformation ; it was the 
liveliness of Christian devotion, not only its deadness, which made 
the revolt. Similarly in the eighteenth century, Christianity 
was not dead because its officials were cold and worldly, and 
because it was suffering through its new disunity the devastating 
experience of provincialism. “The peoples waited for their Wesleys 
and followed them. 

To say that the action of the Spirit is constant, is not the 
same as saying that the professing Christian world receives it 


336 The Spirit and the Church in History 


equably, levelly, consistently. What is not true of any other 
movement of human thought is not to be thought true of religions. 
The facts of history only correspond to the laws of the individual 
mind, which moves in seasons germinal, creative, and absorptive. 
Far more important to any just criticism of the Church than its 
times of stagnation is its power of revival. “This indeed has proved 
constant. ‘The seasons of sloth and sin (real or apparent) have 
been but the prelude to some amazing outburst of spiritual energy, 
unpredictable, defying human probabilities, working enormous 
transformations, vitally changing the prevailing categories of 
thought. More and more it appears that in these revivals the 
intellectual and the spiritual combine, unwitting allies ; that is 
to say, the paths of the Spirit do not move merely in the province 
of what we call so narrowly the “‘ religious ” or still less the “‘ eccle- 
siastical? ; but, for advance here, instigate and require move- 
ment in the whole higher powers of man. Thus the Renaissance 
and Reformation are not truly two movements, two awakenings, 
this intellectual and that spiritual, but two sides of one. The 
godliest deed of those unpleasing fifteenth-century popes was 
their welcoming of pagan thought. Man’s failure is often enough 
God’s opportunity ; so too the failure of His Church the Spirit 
of God can turn to His praise. Renaissance and Reformation 
act and counteract, influence and counter-influence, hurt and 
counter-hurt, mingle, achieve, transform, and yet leave huge 
tasks for the centuries of rest to work out after the centuries 
of tumult pass. Similarly, the age through which we are still 
passing shows the Spirit at work liberating spirit at once through 
scientific criticism and discovery, and through the emulation (at 
first hostile, but eventually friendly, and certainly inevitable) of 
the deeper moral and spiritual forces, which make available the 
conquests of mind to character and life. 

Here indeed we stumble upon a general truth, hitherto too 
little recognised, we believe, both by believers and by others: that 
there never is, nor can be, a great spiritual movement apart from 
the company of an intellectual advance ; nor a great movement of 
mind without a corresponding burst of spiritual progress. Usually, 
but not always, the new knowledge or ideas function first ; and 
intellectual renascence passes into spiritual, as the new comes 
into contact or conflict with the old in the fields of faith and con- 
duct. ‘The Church, as the guardian, interpreter, and inspirer 


Modern Periods of Decadence and Revival 337 


of the highest faith of man, is bound by its very being to sift and 
to test ; and it cannot do this quickly, for it tests not only by the 
processes of thought, but by those also of prayer and of living. 
The mind fares forth, the prophets cry in the desert, of the people 
some are inspired but most perplexed, the Church examines with 
a care involving experience as well as thought ; and so the Spirit’s 
new impulse of spirit gains a home which will hold the new, 
now reconciled, added, mingled with the old, in trust for all 
men and all time. ‘To recognise the inevitability of some such 
cycle is to lessen the chances of conflict and disaster, both by 
softening the impatience of pioneer and prophet, and also by 
modifying their unpopularity and terror to those whose outlook 
is bounded by what has been and what is. Prophet and priest 
have always feared and hated one another, each blind to the fact 
that both are ministers of the same Spirit. At the moment it 
seems to be the peculiar mission of the Church of England to 
reconcile the antagonism of the intellectual and the churchman, 
by saying and showing, first, that the Church has no fear of the 
thinker, but rather welcomes and thanks him ; that his meaning 
to it ultimately (however one-sided and singly-concentrated on 
his novelty he may be for the present) is that of a revivalist, the 
seer of new truth being the minister of new Spirit : and secondly, 
that, on the other hand, the Church of the Holy Spirit is the final 
critic of all new ways of thought, the final test of truth, and its 
trustee for the future ; in that its one interest and ministry is to 
add to the one treasury of truth the things new to the things old, 
guarding them first and distributing them freely, not merely to 
the mind (which the schoolmaster can do) but to the inmost 
spirit and whole character of man. 

This “sacramental conception”? of the Church’s place and 
work in the world is growing conscious and apparent, we believe, 
by that which is its best illustration, the history of the last seventy 
years. A crisis of mind and spirit, comparable to any in history, 
only less great than that consequent upon the coming of Christ 
Himself, declared itself in the second half of the last century. 
It had been gathering force for several decades, but, in this country 
at least, came into the open with the publication of “The 
Origin of Species”? and of “‘ Essays and Reviews.” ‘The one 
was a great and permanent book, the other a little and transtent. 
But they served to announce to every man the two lines of new 

Zz 


338 The Spirit and the Church in History 


thought, the one the result of the scientific investigation of the 
natural world, the other consequent upon the scientific historical 
criticism of the Scriptures. Both affected and upset the received 
beliefs of the Western world. ‘The inevitable conflict of old 
and new took place in the religious field: it must always do so, 
because that is the dearest and most vital place of man’s pos- 
session ; there he houses the innermost sanctities and sanctions 
of his being, and loss elsewhere counts nothing in comparison 
with loss here. Man, being of little faith, fears the diminution 
of his treasure more than he believes in its increase. “That should 
not be put down to the fault of religion which is the fault of man’s 
nature. For awhile in the seventies and eighties the world 
grew dark even to those of most faith; many left the Christian 
fold, and among the prophets were false ones who proclaimed 
the death of Christ. “The Church as trustee of truth seemed to 
small visions to be failing just when, as a matter of fact, it was 
performing its proper function in the most signal manner. Just 
as the impact of the new thought had been gradual, so too was 
the Church’s examination and appropriation of the new gifts of 
the Spirit to spirits. Each was a matter of three or four decades, 
less than a man’s lifetime, a short space for so vast a revolution 
and reconciliation. It would not be true yet to say that the 
stress is over, because, by the mercy of God, the scientists are still 
researching, and the critics still upon their documents. Never- 
theless, not only have the main principles of reconciliation and 
appropriation been perceived, but the religious revival which was in 
progress before the crisis asserted itself has received from it that 
enrichment which makes the Catholic revival in the Church of 
England, with all its consequences within and without, one of the 
loveliest and strongest reformations in Christian history. Christ did 
not die, nor the Church of Christ fail. So far from that, to compare 
the Church of 1826 with that of 1926 is almost a comparison 
of death with life. Not one grain of spiritual treasure which 
the people of Jesus possessed at the earlier date has been lost ; and 
the gains, who shall count? And the witness of one more revival, 
assured and fearless, in circumstances which it is hard to imagine 
can ever seem so desperate, has been added to the positive gains 
of truth and of spirit. 

The’ sacrament of the Church therefore has not only 
survived, but has strengthened both its claims and function. 


The Catholic Church 339 


If it has done this in England, it has done so throughout 
Christendom; for what is true of the triumph of Holy Spirit 
in one part of the field holds good for all. We do not pretend 
anything so absurd as that the English Church has—if the 
military metaphor be allowed—fought and won this battle alone ; 
the cld guard of Rome and the East lay behind ; sharpshooters, 
pioneers, and allies, protestant, modernist, and independent, 
played essential if unorganised and sometimes embarrassing, 
parts in the forefront ; but the brunt fell upon that Communion 
which, under the standard of the Catholic creeds and the discipline 
of Apostolic order, had the necessary freedom and mobility to 
march to the guns and make contact with the armies of science. 
The work of the Church of England through the scientific and 
critical revolution has been at least of an importance sufficient to 
justify at the bar of history her position in temporary separation 
from its fellow-communions of East and West. She has done 
for the Catholic Church that which Rome was not free to do, 
and which the East was too far from the centres of modern thinking 
tocomprehend. Itis not merely that Catholicism has not suffered 
by the new categories ; new knowledge of the world has meant 
in every direction new understanding of God; criticism of the 
two ‘Testaments—the fiercest effort of mind in history—has not 
only revealed the rocks on which they stand, but has given a re- 
interpretation of their place and meaning in religion which is 
well-nigh a new revelation; the concentration of study upon 
the figure of Christ has but lit up the unique majesty of His 
perfection and love. ‘That such is now bound to be the result 
of the nineteenth-century renaissance in the religious sphere 
can scarcely be denied. A revolution of mind, in itself glorious 
and wonderful, has led to glorious revelation of God. “The Church 
has lost nothing but what is good to lose ; it has gained rich reality 
and outpouring of Holy Spirit. 


V 


Tue CatTHotic CHurcH A SACRAMENT OF HoLy 
SPIRIT TO THE WoRLD 
And by the Church we mean deliberately and primarily the 
Catholic Church. Of course all Christianity everywhere has 
gained by the passing of error or inadequacy of understanding ; 


340 The Spirit and the Church in History 


but these inadequacies were more vital to the Protestant position 
of seventy years ago than to the Catholic; the Catholic verities 
at the base of Protestantism have stood the test, and have been 
more and more liberated from outworn dressings. But far more 
important is the sight, ever growing in clearness, of the function of 
Catholicism as the trustee for all Christendom of the religion of 
Christ ; and therefore of the sacramental value of the historic 
Church for the truths deepest and clearest to the world, those 
which reveal God to man, and man to himself. Protestantism 
is greatly valuable not only to the world of men, but to Catholicism 
itself; yet all the time, in the last resort, it depends upon the Church 
of which it is a criticism. “The Catholic Church of early days 
is its acknowledged inspiration, the Catholic Church of these days 
its unacknowledged buttress. It is not with any wish to decry 
the Protestant bodies that we suggest that, in their general 
meaning, they stand to the Church which is the formal sacra- 
ment of Holy Spirit to mankind as, in the sphere of Christian 
devotion, the sermon stands to the Eucharist or momentary prayer 
to age-long liturgy. 

The Ecclesia, which is to fulfil so sacramental a function, 
will necessarily show outward and visible signs of its inward grace. 
Inevitably that will be displayed outwardly amongst other things 
by some ordering or articulation representative of its perpetual 
witness. Order and Succession are not ecclesiastical inventions, 
burdens grievous to be borne, but the unavoidable clothing of the 
Church’s sacramental meaning. You cannot break up and re- 
start divine sacraments, or they cease to carry their own evidence 
of validity. A sacrament cannot be both discontinuous and per- 
petual. ‘The continuity befitting a sacramental race the Catholic 
Church shows impressively. Its continuity even with that 
previous election of the Hebrews is unchallengeable, because at 
the critical point of process the two eras are perfectly united by 
the Person of Christ, and the expansion is the command of Him 
who elects. Continuity, however, is a possession of no great 
independent value in itself ; as a guarantee and servant of the 
sacramental vocation of the Church it is vital. It carries with 
it also the requirement that we should read the lengthening 
tale of the historic Church as modern theologians and historians 
agree to read that of its pre-Christian beginnings. No one has 
seriously attempted that ; perhaps, for the very reason that the 


The Catholic Church 341 


essential meaning of the Church to the world has been too vast 
and far-reaching for isolation and description. It was not the 
mistakes and backslidings of the Jewish people which made their 
meaning to mankind, except in so far as these prepared the way to 
plainer knowledge of God. Nor is it the mistakes and sins of 
the Catholic Church which matter first, however much they have 
hindered the coming of its own proposed kingdom of goodwill 
amongstmen. Itsmeaningand worth to the world have been just 
this constancy of ideal and of the high beliefs which inspire it. 
The histories of doctrine, which have been thoroughly written up 
to and including the Reformation, show that these “ high beliefs ”’ 
are not static, but ever developing in depth and fruitfulness. 
Other chapters of history confirm the swift development of mind 
and spirit in the countries ruled or influenced by Christianity, 
and in none other; for even Japan’s copy of the Christian West 
forms no exception. The peculiar phenomenon of Christian 
missions testifies both to the confidence and unselfish energy of 
the disciples of Holy Spirit, and also to the power of persuasiveness 
wielded by lives so inspired through all the ages. Not that we 
assert for one moment that the Christian countries are Christian, 
or that the Catholic Church at its best moments has been worthy 
of the Spirit which it knows, loves, and teaches. But it lives and 
grows, seeming only to be purified and enriched by the successive 
attacks of states and thinkers and savants; inspiring millions 
to seek virtue and love; and to find both in weal and woe the 
knowledge and peace of God. So the main fact and true meaning 
of this Church, apostolically articulated, unbrokenly continuous, 
becomes clear. It is the one sacramental institution of all time, 
sacramental of the gift of Holy Spirit, instituted by God, trustee 
of the birth, death, resurrection, and eternal love of Jesus 
Christ the Lord. 

The phrase “institutional religion” is to-day unpopular, 
because men see the blemishes of the institution, and wish it 
holier, freer, still. So much the better. For the enemy of the 
Church, and that which cramps it most, is not new knowledge 
or any criticism, but, always and only, sin. ‘The very request, 
from within or without, for greater holiness and fulness of the 
Church will bring its own fulfilment, and makes straight the 
path of Holy Spirit. Priests and preachers may now cease to 
demand allegiance to the Catholic Church merely as an obligation, 


342 The Spirit and the Church in History 


and can call men into loyal fellowship with it asa vocation. “here 
can be nothing higher, holier, and truer than to be part of this 
sacrament of ageless and unaging celebration, consecrating gifts 
to the world which grow ever richer and purer. “The Catholic 
Church can cease to fear the splendid labours of mind in particular 
fields, which by dispelling ignorance and making godly use of the 
intellectual gifts of God, reveal not only scientific but religious 
truth. Science will cease to lose so heavily by its departmentalism, 
and good thought will have freer course to the ends of the earth, 
when thinkers and scientists refuse any longer to weaken the 
Church by a distrust and aloofness caused by conflicts, fears, mis- 
understandings which are now too old. For this sacrament to the 
world will only be complete when it becomes the world, and the 
Royal Priesthood is universal. 


THE REFORMATION 


BY A. HAMILTON THOMPSON 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 
I. CuaracTer and Errecrs or THE Enciish REFORMATION . 346 


I]. ‘Tue Break-up of tHe Mepievat Ponty . : Ree 
1. Failure of the Conciliar Movement. ; aaa 
2. Lollardy and Orthodoxy . : ; eee 
3- England and the Papacy . ‘ : : : i! 449 
II]. ‘Tue Rerormation on THE ConTINENT ; f 5356 
IV. ‘Tue Ancuican Soxution . ; : d A Sag hy 


V. Tue Encuisu Cuurcu oF THE Future : ; : egGd. 


I 


CHARACTER AND EFFECTS OF THE ENGLISH 
REFORMATION 


In one of his poems George Herbert, that most loyal and devout 
son of the Church of England, writes with enthusiasm of the 
perfect lineaments of his spiritual mother, and contrasts her studied 
moderation of aspect and attire with the allurements of the wanton 
of the hills upon the one hand, and upon the other with the dis- 
hevelled array of the wayward inhabitant of the valleys. Between 
Rome and Protestant Nonconformity with its warring sects, the 
British Church, double-moated by the grace of God, pursues a 
middle path and finds in the mean her praise and glory. 

Such congratulation, if it came from a source less sincere and 
pure, might be accused of insular self-complacency. But from 
the doctrine and rites of the Church of England, as organised 
under the Elizabethan settlement, Herbert derived the spiritual 
nourishment which satisfied his soul and quickened his pious 
imagination. Born in 1593, when Whitgift was prosecuting the 
struggle between episcopacy and puritanism, he died in 1632, the 
year before the translation of Laud from London to Canterbury. 
Amid the strife of rival parties, he preserved that ideal of the 
historic position of the Church of England as a true branch of the 
Catholic Church, claiming its right to hold the essentials of 
Catholic doctrine, and exercising the ministry of the Word and 
Sacraments through a properly ordained priesthood, which, 
through all the vicissitudes which that Church has undergone, 
has never been lost. “The example and teaching of Herbert and 
of those who shared his convictions, within a century from the 
breach with Rome, remind us that the Reformation, in spite of 
the efforts of extremists and the uncertainty of individual aims, 
did not effect a complete severance with the past. So far as 
England was concerned, it was a work of reconstruction. It had 
its full share of the errors of judgment which beset the restoration 
of all ancient fabrics: it suffered from the competition of rival 


1 George Herbert, The British Church. 


346 The Reformation 


architects, some of whom preferred demolition to repair: the 
compromises which were the result of their disputes led to diver- 
sities of opinion which have lasted to our own day and are still 
hotly in debate. But the historic basis of the fabric was preserved. 
The renovated structure stood firm upon its old foundations, and 
the fact was apparent, not only to those whose faith was rooted 
in tradition, but to those also who had vainly endeavoured to bring 
it under the domination of novel schemes and systems of reform. 
In considering the Reformation and its effects upon the 
Church of the present day, we must face it as a fact of critical 
importance in our national history. It brought changes with it 
which cannot be overlooked or disregarded at will. Contemp- 
tuous references to ‘‘the so-called Reformation,” implying that it 
was a mere illusion, are out of date. “They have never carried 
weight with serious historians, nor have they improved the credit 
of those who have indulged in them. It is equally impossible to 
be satisfied with the view that the Reformation was primarily a 
political movement to which religious considerations were entirely 
subordinate. Politicians, it is true, used the movement freely to 
serve secular ends : its history is so closely connected with politics 
that it is constantly difficult to distinguish between its religious 
and secular aspects. But in this respect the Reformation is not 
peculiar : the arguments founded upon the influence of ‘Tudor 
monarchs and their ministers on its progress might be applied, 
mutatis mutandis, to the age of Constantine, Justinian, or the 
Saxon emperors. Or again, the adverse verdict which has been 
passed upon the Reformation in the light of social and economic 
changes which accompanied and followed it depends upon a 
romantic and sentimental conception of the Middle Ages which is 
at variance with fact. In the breaking-up of the medieval polity 
the Reformation took a prominent part, but as a consequence, not 
as a cause of a tendency which was present in every department of 


life and thought. 


Il 


Tue Break-Up OF THE MEDIEVAL POLITY 


When all is said and done, the religious force which was 
behind the Reformation remains. Although its energies were 
frequently diverted into alien channels and to unworthy ends, its 


The Break-up of the Medieval Polity 347 


motive power was the necessity of ecclesiastical reform. “The 
demand for the reform of the Church in head and members had 
arisen within the medieval Church itself, during the period which 
had succeeded the disastrous end of the strife between the papacy 
and the empire. The theory of a dual control of Christendom 
by a spiritual and a temporal monarch, each exercising within his 
own sphere an authority derived from God, and working in har- 
mony towards the same end, the establishment of the kingdom of 
God on earth, had come into existence as the result of the need 
of temporal support by the spiritual power. It had failed in 
practice: the continual attempt of one power to overrule the 
other contradicted its possibility. 


1. Failure of the Conciliar Movement 


The field of strife was narrowed into a contest between a 
German king, with a shadowy claim upon the imperial crown, 
and a papacy in complete subservience to a foreign monarch, its 
ally and captor. When the Schism succeeded the captivity of 
Avignon, the problem of the rivalry between spiritual and tem- 
poral rulers receded into the background. The new problem 
was the preservation of the unity and spiritual sovereignty of the 
Church beneath an undivided rule. To the would-be reformers 
during the conciliar period, their immediate task was the settle- 
ment of internal polity and discipline. Re-statement of dogma 
did not occupy their minds: their business was to prevent the 
recurrence of schism by restoring the papacy upon a sound basis. 
Their efforts at reconstruction failed, however, in face of the 
obduracy of the popes to reform by conciliar methods. ‘Their 
divided interests and jarring schemes were confronted by the 
august tradition of the papal monarchy, able to hold its own 
against an unwieldy opposition with no concerted plan. National 
ambitions and jealousies crossed the path which led to Catholic 
unity ; and the dispute between pope and council gradually took 
the form of a new alternative between an united Church governed 
by papal mandates and a group of Churches, federated by a nominal 
recognition of the spiritual authority of the Roman pontiff, but 
ruled by local law and custom and, as a logical consequence, closely 
allied with the policy of national governments. 


348 The Reformation 


2. Lollardy and Orthodoxy 


England, during this period of dispute, adopted no independent 
policy of her own. ‘Throughout the great schism she had been 
faithful to the Roman pope : at this juncture she remained within 
the Roman obedience. Apart from the natural divergency of her 
attitude towards the papacy from that of France, the accession of 
the house of Lancaster to the throne had ensured a régime of strict 
orthodoxy. During the troubled reign of Richard II, Lollardy, 
with its popular interpretation of Wycliffe’s theological and 
political doctrines, had gained some ground, in spite of the efforts 
of bishops to repress it. But, even then, it had not attained the 
proportions of an organised movement. Opponents of clerical 
government coquetted with it, as long as it seemed to promise an 
attack upon the temporal endowments of churchmen as the main 
feature of its programme ; but they were not prepared to connive 
at heresy, and the development of heretical doctrine forfeited it 
their support.t Archbishop Courtenay dealt promptly with its 
academic defenders at Oxford and forced them to recantation or 
flight: its adherents in country districts were persons of little 
influence and, with some exceptions, of low social standing, who 
were isolated by the vigilant policy of the bishops. Although 
cases of heresy are frequent in the ecclesiastical records of the 
fifteenth century, they represent individual opinions which have 
a common likeness but no common ground of action. The 
attempted rebellion of Sir John Oldcastle, the most prominent 
Lollard of the Lancastrian period, was a complete failure ; and 
popular disturbances, from the Peasants’ revolt in 1381 onwards, 
though they doubtless found encouragement from sympathisers 
with Lollardy, were symptoms of social unrest and discontent with 
which theological opinion had no fundamental connection. If 
unusual intellectual activity, in an age of mediocrity, led Reginald 
Pecok, a bishop of the Church, into heresy, his heterodoxy had 
nothing in common with popular Lollardy. The clergy of his 
day found in him its most powerful and eloquent defender against 
detractors, and his subsequent deprivation and imprisonment were 
due as much to his political sympathies as to his theological 
vagaries. 


1 For the attitude of John of Gaunt to Wycliffe and his followers, see 
Fasciculi Zizaniorum (Rolls Ser.), pp. 114, 300, 318. 


The Break-up of the Medieval Polity 349 


3. England and the Papacy 


In this orthodox atmosphere, however, the spirit of national- 
ism, though not aggressively active, was not absent from ecclesi- 
astical affairs. It is impossible to attempt to trace in this context 
the successive steps by which the conception of the medieval 
Church in Europe had become indissoluble from that of the 
supremacy of Rome. ‘The first assertions of that supremacy lie 
far back in history : the authority of the pope, alike as bishop of 
the old capital of the world, as exercising a patriarchate founded 
upon the apostolic origin of his see, and as the successor of the 
prince of the Apostles, had developed into a spiritual monarchy 
wielded by a prelate who claimed the title of vicar of Christ and 
commanded the obedience of kings and princes. It could hardly 
be said that England was backward in recognising this supreme 
power. “The Norman conquest had been sanctioned by a papal 
bull ; and, if the Conqueror had decreed that he himself was the 
sole judge within his realm of the apostolic pretensions of any 
pope and of the validity of his mandates, what pronouncement 
could be more reasonable as coming from the faithful supporter 
of Gregory VII, whose throne was menaced by schism P 
William, it is true, made a careful distinction between the civil 
and ecclesiastical spheres of law, so as to prevent mutual encroach- 
ment ; but it would be a mistake to interpret this action as wholly 
in the interests of the control of the Church by the Crown. On 
the contrary, disobedience to the Church incurred coercion by 
the secular arm, while unauthorised civil intervention with the 
Church’s affairs was prohibited. The freedom thus granted to 
the ecclesiastical courts was greatly curtailed by the legislation of 
Henry II. By the constitutions of Clarendon, the judicial power 
of the Church over the laity was limited by safeguards, appeals to 
Rome were carefully restricted by the necessity of reference to 
the king’s approval, the question of the possession of disputed 
benefices was brought within the final cognisance of the king’s 
court, and the Crown claimed the right of nominating bishops 
and of controlling the subsequent elections. 

The spirit of the constitutions of Clarendon, however, was 
Caesarism, not nationalism. The papacy, indeed, during the 
century in which it rose to its highest eminence, was the champion 


1 See the ordinance printed in Stubbs, Select Charters, ed. Davis, pp. 99, 100. 


350 The Reformation 


of local freedom against secular tyranny. “The pope who supported 
Becket encouraged the nascent independence of the Lombard 
republics and humbled Barbarossa. During the conflict between 
John and his barons, the influence of Innocent III and of the 
Church generally was on the side of the rebels ; and the refusal 
of John to accept the papal nominee to the see of Canterbury 
added fresh ground to the quarrel. The submission of John to 
the pope, with all its humiliating circumstances, was a temporary 
relief from the struggle, and its immediate consequence was the 
absolution of England from the interdict. Not until the position 
was changed, and the pope appeared on the side of John, was the 
action openly condemned as a national disgrace. It was at any 
rate with the aid of the archbishop appointed by the pope that 
the barons eventually forced from the king those concessions 
which, subjected to a wider application than was actually contem- 
plated by their framers, came to be regarded as the chief guarantee 
of national liberty ; and, in the forefront of the charter in which 
they were embodied, the freedom of the ecclesia Anglicana was 
formulated. In so far as this famous clause defines the position 
of the Church within the realm of England, it may be said to 
countenance the theory of a national Church. But the tyranny 
against which the English Church protested was not papal, but 
regal, the tyranny of a national king. ‘The charter in which the 
protest occurs was witnessed by a primate who was also a cardinal 
of the holy Roman Church and by the papal subdeacon who had 
received John’s resignation of his crown to the pope : at the head 
of the names of those who counselled its re-issue in 1216 and 1217 
was that of the apostolic legate Gualo. It would be useless to 
argue that the Church of the English nation was an Anglican 
body which claimed to be independent of the Holy See. It was 
an integral part of a Church which is described in the official 
language of English bishops as Catholic, Apostolic and Roman. 
As time went on, circumstances changed. Even Innocent III 
was willing to absolve John from his oath to observe the Great 
Charter. “The popes of the thirteenth century interfered freely 


1 In 1216 the barons, according to Matthew Paris, spoke bitterly of the 
relations between John and the Pope: “ Haec facit charissimus in Christo 
filius papae, qui suum vassallum tam liberum et nobile reznum inaudita novitate 
subiugantem tuetur.” ‘The same author credits them with strong expressions 
against the pope: “‘ Ut quid ad nos extendit Romanorum insatiata cupiditas ? 
. - . Ecce successores Constantini, et non Petri.” 


The Break-up of the Medieval Polity 351 


in national politics, siding with kings against their subjects and 
fostering the growing power of France in the interest of their 
own domination in Italy, until Boniface VIII, asserting his 
sovereignty with a boldness which exceeded that of his greatest 
predecessors,! overreached himself and destroyed the autocracy 
which he sought to vindicate. During this period, and still more 
during the century which followed, a strong current of anti-papal 
feeling set in throughout England. Popes who were subjects of 
a hostile power made intolerable demands upon the compliance of 
the nation. ‘The system of reservation and provision of bishoprics 
and rich benefices traversed the rights of cathedral chapters and 
patrons of churches, and challenged the competence of royal 
courts of justice. Appeals to the papal Curia, provocative of 
long and expensive litigation, overrode the jurisdiction of prelates 
and their delegates. Bishops found their appointments to vacant 
dignities and prebends forestalled by the appearance of proctors of 
foreign cardinals and papal officials to prosecute the claims of their 
principals to fill such vacancies. "The payment of first-fruits to 
the pope and of periodical fees in lieu of personal visits to Rome 
or Avignon landed bishops in debt and involved them in financial 
complications with Italian bankers? The papal court was a 
market in which spiritual privileges were bought and sold, and 
the pope’s collectors in England kept a watchful eye upon all 
possible sources of revenue. Parliament took advantage of the 
most successful period of Edward III’s war with France to pass 
the statutes of 1351 and 1353, in which provisors and appellants 
outside the king’s courts were subjected to legal penalties ; and 
these statutes were more stringently enacted forty years later. 
Praemunire, however, long remained a dead letter? ; and the 
statutes of Provisors merely had the effect of establishing a modus 
vivendi between pope and king, without benefit to the freedom 
of the Church as postulated in the Great Charter. 


1 See the declaration in the bull Unam sanctam (Extrav. Comm. I. vii. 1): 
‘“‘ Porro subesse Romano Pontifici omni humanae creaturae declaramus . . . 
omnino esse de necessitate salutis.”” This may be a logical inference from the 
claims put forward by earlier popes, but it goes far beyond their actual 
statements in the unconditional inclusiveness of its terms. 

2 Valuable evidence upon this subject may be gathered from the wealth of 
financial detail contained in the unpublished register of Archbishop Melton 
(1317-40) at York, under the heading Intrinseca de camera. 

8 For recent commentary upon the statute of 1393 and its working, see W. T’. 
Waugh, The Great Statute of Praemunire (Eng. Hist. Rev., xxxvil. 173-205). 


shy The Reformation 


No temporal legislation, as a matter of fact, could affect the 
spiritual supremacy of the pope. Anti-papal statutes were passed 
in parliament without the concurrence of the spiritual lords, who 
shrank from compromising the allegiance which they owed to 
the visible head of the Church. So far as the Crown was con- 
cerned, a deliberate rejection of the Roman see as the source of 
ecclesiastical preferment would have been impolitic. 

‘The pope might be restrained from impinging upon the rights 
of English patrons; but, if English incumbents were to enjoy the 
advantages of plurality and non-residence, the sanction of the 
Holy See was necessary. “The parliaments of Edward III and 
Richard II, in safeguarding the temporal power of the Crown, 
insisted on the theory that ecclesiastical endowments were the 
gift of royal and noble benefactors, and that the descendants of 
such donors inherited claims which could not be set aside by papal 
interference! ; but they asserted no principle which vindicated 
independence of the spiritual supremacy of Rome for the Church 
in England. 

‘The fact that, upon so important a point as the patronage and 
disposal of benefices, the common law of the realm held its own 
is by no means to be overlooked or minimised. At the same time, 
in matters within the competence of ecclesiastical courts, the 
judges resorted to no national code of law. The canon law of 
England was the canon law of the Western Church, and the canon 
law of the Western Church was papal law, in whose authoritative 
texts the canons of early councils and the opinions of individual 
fathers of the Church were reinforced by an enormous mass of 
papal pronouncements upon every conceivable subject. Many 
of these, as a very casual study of the first five books of the 
Decretals will show, had been delivered with relation to English 
cases: under Alexander III and Innocent III, England had 
taken its full share in augmenting the law of the Church as 
decreed by the popes. It is true that successive archbishops of 
Canterbury had issued constitutions in their provincial synods, 
and that these had their due weight in Church courts. It might 
also be possible, as in the case of Pecham’s constitution concerning 
pluralities, that a primate, by inadvertence or excessive zeal, might 


1 This theory was expressed in the statute of Carlisle (1307), and repeated 
in the preambles of the statutes of 1351 and 1390. See Statutes of the Realm, i. 
150, 316 3 il. go. 


The Break-up of the Medieval Polity 353 


contradict the purport of an apostolic decree. “The final inter- 
pretation, however, depended upon the Roman solution of the 
problem. Further, even had provincial constitutions possessed a 
local superiority to the law of the Church as a whole, they formed 
in themselves no complete body of law. ‘Their volume is re- 
latively insignificant, and, comprehensive as they are, they provide 
no full or satisfactory answer to the questions which came before 
ecclesiastical lawyers in their ordinary practice. All that they 
contributed was a general summary of the law of the Church 
upon subjects which constantly came within the scope of that 
practice ; and in this respect their authority was conditioned, like 
those of the legatine constitutions of Otho and Ottobon, for which 
English lawyers had at least equal respect, by the terms of docu- 
ments included in the vast body of canon law. In the fifteenth 
century Lyndwood, with a masterly command of his sources, 
provided the authoritative commentary upon the provincial 
constitutions, and, in so doing, deserved the gratitude of English 
practitioners. But Lyndwood’s book is not a Corpus juris. It is 
merely a guide to the interpretation and amplification of the dicta 
of English primates by reference to canon law and to the Roman 
civil law on which the foundations of canon law were laid. “The 
appearance of Lyndwood’s Provinctale did not mean that the 
English lawyer abandoned Gratian and the Decretals : all that 
happened was that he was enabled to find his way about them with 
much less trouble than before, and this is the advantage which 
Lyndwood still offers to the reader who would derive profit from 
his pages.? 

Lyndwood’s exposition of the provincial constitutions is almost 
contemporary with the victory of the papacy over its conciliar 
opponents. It is unequivocally the work of a lawyer who 
recognises the papacy as the fountain-head of ecclesiastical law. 
It belongs to a period at which the idea of an English national 
Church was as yet unformulated. But, even so, the principle of 
nationalism was gaining ground. ‘There was a current theory 
that Henry V, in his joy at the termination of the great schism 
and his devout gratitude for his successes in France, had promised 

1 See the essay on Lyndwood in Maitland, Roman Canon Law in the Church 
of England, 1-50. Maitland’s conclusions on these points are inevitable in the 
light of ecclesiastical documents: see, ¢.g. the elaborate arguments upon points 
of law in Hereford Reg. Trefnant (Cant. and York Soc.), pp. 73-90, 103-114. 


In these documents the appeal is entirely to Roman law, civil and canon. 
2A 


354 The Reformation 


to allow Martin V an unprecedented control over English 
benefices at the disposal of the Holy See.t “This was not the 
policy of the regency which, at Henry’s early death, entered upon 
the administration of the damnosa haereditas which he bequeathed 
to his infant son. ‘The story of the translation of Kempe to the 
see of York in 1425 illustrates the principle that, where the 
temporal power chose to press its will upon the pope, his policy 
was to comply with its demands. An examination of the appoint- 
ments to English sees from the middle of the fourteenth century 
onwards indicates that, even where the papal right of translation was 
exercised to avoid the difficulties which might arise in consequence 
of the Statutes of Provisors, the will of the Crown was not ignored, 

The normal method was for the pope to confirm the nomina- 
tion made in the name of the Crown. ‘The chapter of the 
cathedral church received the congé d’élire : on the transmission 
of the election to the pope, the letters of provision were made out 
which were necessary to the spiritual validity of the appointment. 
It is possible that, in unimportant sees, cathedral chapters were 
allowed a free hand. But the fact remains that the Crown, as 
founder and patron, treated appointments which were nominally 
elective as presentations to benefices in its gift, with a growing 
disregard of constitutional formalities. Its nominees were given 
custody of the temporalities of vacant sees to which they were 
elected and provided as a matter of course. At his election the 
nominee of the Crown was already virtually in possession. More- 
over, a comparison of such documents as the official headings 
prefixed to episcopal registers will show that, while bishops 
reckoned their pontifical years from the date of their consecration 
or translation, the act by which their temporalities were restored 
to them was regarded with increasing importance as putting them 
in full control of their diocesan jurisdiction.? 

This was the position upon the eve of the Reformation. ‘The 
supreme authority of the pope in matters spiritual was respected 

1 See Cal. Papal Letters, viii. 216-18. The whole series of documents of 
which the letter of Eugenius IV, containing the statement that Henry V had 
this intention, is one, is very instructive as illustrating the relations between the 
Crown and papacy in the case of a disputed appointment to a see. 

2 This may be remarked in the rubrics at the beginning of the registers of 
the rsth and early 16th century bishops of Hereford. These omit all mention 
of election. In 1504 Bishop Mayew is stated to have been called to the see by 


apostolic authority and the nomination of the Crown : in the case of Bishop 
Bothe (1516), only nomination by the Crown is mentioned. 


The Break-up of the Medieval Polity 355 


implicitly. Whether he was the true source of episcopal juris- 
diction is still a moot point on which canonists disagree : large as 
are the assumptions which can be and have been made on behalf 
of the vicar of Christ, there are obvious limits to the powers of a 
vicar. But, as vicar of Christ, he possessed a jurisdiction which 
transcended that of any diocesan bishop and was superior to the 
patriarchal authority of the successor of Peter. He was the ‘ uni- 
versal ordinary,” wielding powers which superseded the mandates 
of bishops and the decisions of their judges in the ecclesiastical 
courts. Ifa bishop was slow in executing a commission entrusted 
to him in his own diocese by the Holy See, and in a matter which 
he might reasonably consider to belong to his own province as 
local ordinary, the pope could transfer execution to a commissioner 
who could take the business in hand without reference to the dio- 
cesan. An offender who was unwilling to stand to the judgment 
of his bishop could evade it by procuring absolution from the 
collector who acted as the pope’s agent in England.1 At the 
same time, where the temporal power was concerned, the pope 
was obliged to walk warily and submit to compromise. As the 
papacy, from the temporal point of view, fell into the position of 
an Italian principality, it became involved in the intricacies of 
national politics which it could no longer direct, and its power of 
enforcing its will upon kings and their ministers was seriously 
curtailed. ‘Thus, at the period of the English Reformation, the 
English Church, although subject to the jurisdiction of Rome, 
had become definitely national in composition. If, in the early 
part of the sixteenth century, Italians were promoted to English 
sees, this was merely a logical result of the understanding between 
the papacy and the government. Where their mutual interests 
were concerned, pope and king were ready to accommodate each 
other ; but, where those interests collided, the advantage lay with 
the Crown, ‘The Church, in fact, was in service to two masters ; 
and, in a trial of strength between the two, the allegiance of the 
Church was necessarily influenced by the temporal sovereign 
who could bring the most direct pressure to bear upon her. 


1 Instances of both types of case mentioned here may be found in the history 
of the small chantry college of Irthlingborough (Assoc. Archit. Soc. Reports 
XXXv, 267 sqg.). “The authority of the “ universal ordinary ” is stated explicitly 
in the bull Sancta (Extrav. Comm. I. ili. 1) : “‘ Sancta Romana ecclesia quae 
disponente Domino super omnes alias ordinariae potestatis obtinet principatum a 
Deo, utpote mater universorum Christi fidelium et magistra.” 


356 The Reformation 


IIl 


THe REFORMATION ON THE CONTINENT 


The truth of the matter is that, at the beginning of the 
sixteenth century, the preservation of the papal jurisdiction 
depended upon the compliance of the pope with the will of tem- 
poral monarchs. At no time was the spiritual influence of the 
papacy lower. The power which, three centuries earlier, had 
stood for righteousness against the kings of the earth was reduced 
to defending its precarious position upon Italian soil by fostering 
political combinations against the foreign powers which threatened 
its security in turn. Its hope lay in its ability to maintain the 
balance between national jealousies. Meanwhile, however, there 
were ominous signs that, in the pursuit of its Italian policy, its 
hold upon Christendom was relaxed. In countries whose ortho- 
doxy was beyond question, that orthodoxy was a matter of national 
conservatism. Spain, of all nations, repressed heresy most sternly 
and effectively ; yet the attitude of the Spanish kings to the Holy 
See during the century which followed the union of the crowns of 
Castile and Aragon was by no means that of submissive children. 
Their filial obedience, constantly tried, was tempered by the 
consciousness that their spiritual parent needed to be kept in order 
by admonitions and even by open threats. In the north of Europe, 
heresy developed openly. ‘The climax of tendencies which could 
no longer be kept in abeyance was reached in 1527, when the 
forces of the Most Catholic king who was also ruler of Germany, 
a mixed multitude of divided creeds and diverse national sympathies 
under the leadership of a French renegade, attacked and plundered 
Rome. ‘The pope lay at the mercy of Charles V. ‘T'wo cen- 
turies and a quarter earlier, Dante, with all his hatred for Boni- 
face VIII and the corruption of the papal monarchy, had seen 
with horror the lilies enter Anagni and Christ bound and reviled 
once more in the person of His vicar.1 In 1527 pious minds 
might still feel compunction for the captivity of the pope ; but 
the catastrophe was the result, not of such an effort to re-assert 
a spiritual dominion over princes as gave the fall of Boniface VIII 
a certain nobility, but of a long course of diplomacy in which that 
dominion had been well-nigh forfeited. Henceforward the 


Purg. xx. 86 59q- 


The Anglican Solution RS 7- 


business of the papacy was to regain its spiritual authority, with 
the help of the nations which were still ready to admit it ; and 
the problem of the internal reform of the Church became once 
again a pressing question. 


IV 


Tue ANGLICAN SOLUTION 


Nevertheless, the disaster had come, and must in any case 
have come, too late for the revival of a spiritual monarchy, uniting 
all national Churches into a compact body under one head. On 
the one hand, revolt against that headship was spreading, and in- 
volved rebellion against the whole doctrinal system of which the 
pope was the chief representative. “The attack upon traditional 
dogma, with its appeal to the freedom of private judgment in 
matters of faith, assailed the entire mechanism which guarded 
the faith of the medieval Church. New systems of spiritual 
polity were invented to suit new theories : a large portion of the 
Christian world was split into sects, united only in their rejection 
of the doctrine of the transmission of divine grace through the 
ministry of a hierarchy which culminated in the person of the 
vicar of Christ. On the other hand, this manifold division and 
lack of settled purpose were confronted by the hope that unity 
still could be maintained under a spiritualised and reformed papacy. 
To hold the political aspirations of the papacy in check was not 
to hinder its exercise of legitimate authority, but to promote its 
influence in its own proper sphere and to justify its claim to 
dominion over the souls of men considered as members of the 
Christian commonwealth, apart from their position as members 
of distinct nationalities. 

Thus the Reformation upon the continent became a conflict 
between two ideals of reform. In face of destructive schemes 
which did away with the old ecclesiastical system and all that it 
represented, the conception of the reform of the Church from 
within, long dallied with and postponed, became a practical object. 
The choice lay between the abandonment of outward unity for a 
sectarianism guided by individual caprice and the maintenance of 
the compact symmetry of ecclesiastical order under the quickening 
influence of a renewed spiritual fervour. ‘To both parties the 


358 The Reformation 


idea of a hierarchy without the papacy was inconceivable. The 
necessity of a vicar of Christ as head of the visible Church, as 
supreme legislator and tribunal of appeal, was the question at the 
root of their differences. Impugners of the papal jurisdiction 
attacked the whole system which it had overshadowed and in- 
cluded beneath its working. The defenders of that system set 
themselves to strengthen and assert the papal authority as the 
permanent safeguard of its active existence. Between a spiritual 
autocracy on the one hand and the will-worship of the individual 
on the other there could be no intermediate path. At best, the 
alternative to unquestioning surrender of the will and judgment 
was the adoption of a loose congregationalism, which might 
assume temporary form under the control of some commanding 
personality, but had no guarantee of permanence or consistency. 
This alternative has long survived the circumstances in which 
it arose. ‘To the continental protestant of to-day it is as present 
as ever: it finds expression in the obiter dicta of members of our 
own Church who are more closely in touch with novel readings 
of theology than with the teaching of history. We are invited 
to see, in the English Church as the Reformation settlement left 
it, one of many protestant sects, allied in general sympathy with 
the reformed systems of the continent, and differing from them 
only in its retention of the semblance of an antiquated and obsolete 
machinery. No candid student of the English Reformation will 
overlook or endeavour to explain away certain features in its 
development. It began in a formal renunciation of spiritual 
allegiance to Rome, and in the transference of that allegiance to 
the Crown as supreme head of a national Church. ‘The political 
circumstances in which this came about severed England from its 
connection with the great Catholic powers and made it seek 
alliances with the princes who had embraced the protestant cause 
abroad. As a natural consequence, close relations arose between 
the continental reformers and that party in the Church which 
regarded the breach with Rome as an opportunity for welcoming 
novel experiments in doctrine and ecclesiastical government. 
During the reign of Edward VI this party was in the ascendant : 
the English liturgy of 1549, which preserved a close continuity 
with historical models, was superseded three years later by a form 
of common prayer and worship in which the influence of foreign 
refugees was allowed to have a disproportionate part. Had that 


The Anglican Solution 359 


régime continued longer, it is not improbable that the Church of 
England would have been led irrecoverably into a position of 
mere sectarianism. As it was, this revolutionary progress was 
checked by the accession of Mary, followed by the temporary 
return to communion with Rome. But, if conservative senti- 
ment was strongly in favour of strict orthodoxy on the old pattern, 
it also had a strongly nationalistic bias. Reconciliation with the 
Holy See was closely associated with an unpopular foreign alliance, 
and was accompanied by a policy of religious persecution, which, 
although from one point of view it was no new thing and had 
the sanction of English law, was nevertheless a tactical error of 
the gravest kind. In no respect was Mary more to blame than 
Henry VIII: her motives indeed were purer than his. Perse- 
cution, however, of loyal subjects for the sake of religion was a 
very different thing from persecution exercised, with whatever 
ruthlessness, against the supporters of a foreign jurisdiction in 
opposition to the national monarchy ; and the fact remains that, 
rightly or wrongly, the Marian suppression of heresy affected the 
minds of Englishmen with a greater and more permanent feeling 
of repulsion than was caused by the tragedies of the Pilgrimage of 
Grace and, at a later date, the Rising of the North. 

It would be fruitless to speculate what might have happened, 
had Elizabeth chosen to accept the Roman obedience. However 
tortuous the policy which she followed at the opening of her reign, 
there can be no question that in the course which she took she 
tested national sentiment and gauged it accurately. The Eliza- 
bethan settlement was not a glorious thing. It was a compromise 
which included parties and persons of very diverse views 1n one 
religious establishment. Its motive was political : the Church 
was regarded by the framers of parliamentary legislation as a 
department of state in which uniformity of practice was an essential 
condition of stability. The formulae of doctrine which emerged 
from the settlement were couched in studiously ambiguous terms. 
Only a special pleader will argue that the Thirty-Nine Articles say 
one thing and mean another ; but their compilers, where points 
were in dispute, succeeded in saying two things in one breath 


1 The relations between Church and State under Elizabeth have lately been 
re-examined by Dr. W. P. M. Kennedy, Elizabethan Episcopal Administration 
(Alcuin Club), and his conclusions fully stated in his introduction (vol. i.) toa 
series of episcopal injunctions and other documents. 


360 The Reformation 


with remarkable adroitness. There was no question of concili- 
ating a definitely Romanising party in the Church. What was 
needed was to provide a modus vivendi between the party attached 
to episcopal government and the innovators who came back from 
exile in centres of foreign protestantism in love with alien methods 
of Church polity, a common ground upon which both might 
work together as agents of the state, irrespective of mutual 
differences. 

The idea of the Church as an instrument of national policy 
was not new. It was a corollary of the theory of national 
monarchies which had superseded the medieval ideal of a world- 
wide empire, and during the later Middle Ages, as we have seen, 
the civil government had exercised a prepotent influence over the 
appointment of bishops. It was a new thing, on the other hand, 
to see a temporal ruler controlling a Church within which rival 
factions, divided upon fundamental points of doctrine and practice, 
strove for the mastery. It is easy, of course, for a certain type of 
critic, who regards the Elizabethan settlement merely as a clever 
stroke of statecraft, to speak disparagingly of the religious issues 
which it involved: such a view neglects the genuine conviction 
which lay beneath the controversies of the period, and looks upon 
their superficial aspect with hardly concealed scorn. We may 
sympathise more entirely with the attitude of the faithful Roman- 
ist, who, in that day as now, could not conceive of the Church 
without its visible head and postulated that catholicity implied 
obedience to the Apostolic Roman see. His Church was busy 
with the work of reforming itself. New influences had arisen 
in its borders, bent on kindling religious fervour and on strengthen- 
ing the papal position as the first necessity in their programme. 
The faith of the medieval Church was being defined and restated 
at ‘Trent; old heresies were being condemned ; dogma was 
assuming a settled rigidity. To such a spectator England had 
fallen into heresy ; her monarch had incurred excommunication ; 
the subjects of the pope were prescribed and hunted down, fined 
and imprisoned. The Elizabethan Romanist was ready to risk his 
life on behalf of the Holy See, and in so doing he found no foes 
more dangerous than the bishops of the Church of England, policing 
their dioceses and keeping as strict a watch upon the disaffected 
as their predecessors had kept upon the Lollards, He himself 
was naturally incapable of discerning in the religious body which 


The Anglican Solution 361 


prosecuted him a member of the true Church : it was an apostate 
communion to which the dignities of the historic Church of the 
country had been transferred, and its endowments, orsuch of them 
as had survived the rapacity of the Crown and the court, had been 
appropriated. His view survives to-day, not as a mere suspicion 
or as a weapon of controversy, but as a genuine conviction. The 
Church of England might congratulate itself on putting an end 
to the papal usurpation ; but all the while it was usurping the titles, 
goods and foundations which it had wrested from their ancient 
holders and had misapplied. 

Such a point of view has its logical basis, and outward appear- 
ances did much to strengthen it. The traditional liturgy of the 
Church, round which the fabric of medieval faith had been built 
and compacted, had gone with all its venerable associations, and 
was banned as popish and superstitious. In its place there was a 
form of worship which, if it had not entirely obliterated, at any 
rate partially obscured its most familiar aspects, and was celebrated 
with a bareness of ritual in strange contrast with the solemnity of 
the ancient rite. The process of denuding churches of all orna- 
ments which recalled the past went on under the direction of 
prelates whose learning and love of antiquity were somewhat 
inconsistent with their destructive zeal. Yet, amid all these 
changes, the old machinery of ecclesiastical government remained 
unimpaired and in perfect working order. Within less than a 
quarter of a century, four reigns had produced startling fluctuations. 
Henry VIII had transferred the papal authority over an orthodox 
Church to the Crown. Under Edward VI the Church had been 
protestantised. Mary had brought it back into submission to 
Rome. Elizabeth had deromanised it and subjected it to interests 
of state. But, through all this, the processes of ecclesiastical law 
had gone forward in the old way. Apart from the changes of 
constitution in certain cathedral churches consequent upon the 
suppression of the monasteries, and from the creation of a few new 
dioceses, there are few alterations to be traced. The ordinary 
jurisdiction of bishops remained as in the past. Officials and 
vicars-general still exercised their delegated authority. In the 
official records of English dioceses for this period traces of con- 
temporary change are few and far between. Bishops were de- 
prived of their sees and burned for heresy, but the business of 
diocesan administration, founded upon centuries of long practice, 


2:02 The Reformation 


was not interrupted for a single day.t The machine whose 
efficiency in the past had been so largely controlled by papal law 
could work without the help of the pope. 

More than this, in spite of the changes of personnel among 
the bishops themselves, the episcopal succession was not visibly 
broken. It was preserved throughout the reign of Edward VI 
at a time when foreign non-episcopal bodies were gaining ground 
in the country and novel systems had their best chance of success. 
Without the maintenance of the episcopate, uniformity of re- 
ligious practice was impossible: the Church, split up into sects, 
would fall into anarchy and become the prey of civil strife. 
Episcopacy formed the essential link with the past which ensured 
order and discipline. It»is possible that this, which is not the 
highest view of the institution, was the most powerful motive 
which influenced the filling up in 1559 and 1560 of sees vacant 
by the death or deprivation of Marian bishops. Even so, the 
consecration of new bishops was not undertaken without the care- 
ful provision of valid means to secure the historic continuity of 
the office. “The controversy which has raged round the conse- 
cration of Parker has wasted much energy on both sides ;_ but it 
has at any rate had the effect of displaying the uneasiness and 
uncertainty of opinion prevalent among those who have sought to 
impugn the act.2. The ground of attack has constantly shifted 
from one objection to another, until it is reduced to the mere 
presumption that the act was invalidated by the intention of the 
consecrators. ‘Io this petitio principii common sense has only 
one answer, that, so far as human judgment is capable of defining 
private intention, the end which the consecrators had in view was 
the transmission without breach of the apostolic gifts derived in 
the beginning from the Founder of the Church. Otherwise, 
their action would have been pointless. 

‘The preservation of episcopal order and jurisdiction, with the 
far-reaching consequences which it involved, is the distinguishing 
feature of the English Reformation. It had the inevitable effect 
of restoring confidence, as time went on, to a Church distressed 
by internal conflicts of opinion. ‘The hold which foreign pro- 


* Episcopal registers for this period were not always well or fully kept ; 
but this was due, not to interruption of business, but to negligence in keeping 
official records posted up to date. 

2 See the searching review of the whole controversy in Dixon, Hist. Ch. 


England’, ed. Gee, v. 205 599. 


The Anglican Solution 363 


testantism had obtained upon the English Church weakened 
throughout the Elizabethan period. Puritan zealots found their 
cherished doctrines incompatible with episcopacy. In a primate 
like Whitgift, waging war on behalf of law and order, they saw 
an authority as dangerous to their ideals as any pope, and an 
authority backed by all the resources of the civil government. 
For the stringent measures which the prelates of the sixteenth 
and seventeenth centuries employed against papists and puritans 
alike we can have little sympathy in an age of easy toleration. 
But it is impossible not to recognise that, with all the drawbacks 
to spirituality involved in the conditions of the Elizabethan settle- 
ment, the historic conception of the mission of the Church as 
the accredited guardian of the appointed means of divine grace 
held its own and steadily grew in strength. The position of a 
national Church, free from external interference, which Parker 
and Whitgift had used their power to uphold, was defined un- 
mistakably by Laud and his supporters. In such men as Lancelot 
Andrewes, Jeremy Taylor, and George Herbert the power of 
that Church to attract and to nurture, through its ministry of the 
Word and Sacraments, the highest type of religious devotion was 
manifest. Loyal to the Reformation and recognising the pro- 
testant attitude of their Church to Rome, they yet proved that 
such loyalty was consistent with a theology and with forms of 
worship hallowed by antiquity, and justified the via media taken 
by the English Church as scriptural, primitive and truly Catholic. 

It is true that their work was temporarily checked by the 
puritan revolution. But the religious disorders of the Common- 
wealth proved the impossibility of the maintenance of civil order 
without the principle of cohesion provided by the national Church : 
sectarianism meant confusion and anarchy. “The conflict between 
royalist and republican, between High Churchman and precisian 
left its permanent mark upon English thought. It perpetuated 
within the Church itself that opposition of parties which had been 
inherited from Elizabethan times. On the one hand, orthodox 
divines upheld episcopacy and its divine origin : on the other, the 
formalism of episcopal government and the mechanical theories 
which it seemed to encourage were undervalued by the defenders 
of less confined views of the operation of divine grace. It must 
be conceded that the political events of the close of the seventeenth 
century left behind them an orthodoxy which laid more stress 


364 The Reformation 


upon bare forms than upon the spiritual meaning of ordinances, 
and that the Church of the eighteenth century, as a whole, was 
spiritually at a low ebb. It is a mistake, however, to suppose that 
the revival of spiritual life which showed itself openly during the 
second half of the century was wholly promoted by disaffected 
enthusiasts. It was accompanied, as for example in the Wesleys, 
by a devout desire to give warmth and reality to the services and 
doctrines of the Church ; and it was only the distrustfulness and 
reluctance of ecclesiastical authorities which alienated the would-be 
reformers and laid the foundations of modern nonconformity. 
‘The unreadiness of a privileged institution to set its house in order 
was still as manifest as it had been three hundred years before. 


V 


Tue EnciisH Cuurcu oF THE FUTURE 


Yet the vicissitudes which the Church of England has under- 
gone since the Reformation have failed to weaken the conviction 
of her children to-day that she, as a true and living member of the 
Church of Christ, is in full possession of the means of grace and 
of the authority for their dispensation. Those means may at 
times have been underprized, their nature may have been disputed, 
that authority may have been minimised ; but no careful student 
of her history can overlook its witness to the constant working 
of the Spirit of God within her borders. From the days of the 
Evangelical revival onwards, she has made continual progress as a 
spiritual force. Under the influence of the Tractarian movement, 
she recovered a lively sense of her mission and its opportunities 
which, in spite of opposition and internal controversies, has per- 
meated her whole organisation at home and abroad, so that even 
those who still raise the cry of warning against a betrayal of the 
principles of the Reformation argue almost unconsciously from a 
point of view complacently familiar with much that an earlier 
generation denounced. ‘The marked growth of mutual forbear- 
ance between ecclesiastical parties, though not wholly without its 
dangers, is due to a heightening of spiritual ideals visible in every 
department of the Church’s activities. The truth has come home 
to all Churchmen that the life of the individual soul needs for its 
quickening and sustainment a full sense of loyalty to its corporate 


The English Church of the Future 365 


responsibilities, that such life finds its true refreshment in that 
sacramental union with the Head of the Church which binds all 
faithful souls together in unity and supplies the Church with 
never-failing strength. And, while this closer cohesion is being 
effected among members of the Church of England, the need of 
it is felt as strongly in the religious bodies which stand outside its 
pale. Contemporary movements in nonconformist communions 
in England and among protestant bodies abroad are signalised by 
the desire to abandon a policy of isolation and dissidence, and to 
seek a common ground of reunion with those who, through all 
changes and chances, have held to the historic conception of the 
Church and its ministry. 

At the present time, it is possible to look back too appre- 
hensively to the perils which beset the English Church at the 
Reformation and to the risks which she has subsequently en- 
countered. By identifying ourselves too closely with her past 
anxieties and controversies, we may lose our sense of perspective. 
These things cannot be overlooked by the historian, but a sound 
judgment will regard them as dangers incident to the growth of 
a living organism which has survived them and gathered from them 
strength to meet and overcome the trials of the present and the 
future. Throughout her post-Reformation history, the Church 
of England has given proof of a steadfastness of purpose and a 
power of recovery amid such perils which we may well review 
with thankfulness and confidence. The path on which she 
entered in the sixteenth century was new and untried, and its 
beginnings were dark and uncertain ; but no one who watches 
her progress along it can doubt that she was guided by the Spirit 
of God, acquiring stores of spiritual energy which have revived 
her in periods of faintness and have quickened her to fresh and 
accumulated effort. Under this guidance, she has achieved 
successes which were beyond the dreams of the medieval Church. 
She has prosecuted her apostolic mission and planted apostolic 
faith and order in regions outside the hope and imagination of the 
most sanguine of Crusaders. Without novel or sensational ex- 
periments, adhering closely to traditional lines of doctrine and 
practice, she has made her influence felt as a permanent element 
in the life of the Christian Church, fostering in her sons a devotion 
and a temper of mind which have added no small strength and 
supplied new impetus to the spiritual activities of the modern 


366 The Reformation 


world. From the protestantism of her early reformers she has 
found her way to a positive assertion of her claim to an abiding 
place in the Catholic community from which she has never separ- 
ated herself by any action or declaration. The Reformation 
severed old ties and disunited bodies of professing Christians who 
owed obedience to the same Lord : it put an abrupt end to an old 
order of things which had long threatened disruption. ‘The 
restoration of that visible unity of the Church in its medieval form 
is hardly possible to-day. But, to those in whose minds the hope 
of reunion is strong and is not dominated by conceptions, however 
venerable, belonging to one particular age of human history, the 
English Church has its part, and perhaps a deciding part, to play 
in the work of restoring Catholic unity to the Church at large, 
so that its Lord, at His coming, may present it to Himself a glorious 
Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, 


THE ORIGINS OF THE 
SACRAMENTS 


BY NORMAN POWELL WILLIAMS 


CONTENTS 


I. Inrropucrory—“ OsjectTive” an 


‘THEORIES OF THE SACRAMENTS 


II. Tur Numser of° rue SACRAMENTS 


D ““SuBJECTIVE” 


III. Tue Evipence or THe New 'TesraMent 


IV. Tue “ Mystery RELIGIoNs 


9? 


V. A Critique or THE “ Mystery ” Hyporuests 5 : 


1. “ Parallelism? and ‘ 
a priori probability . 


‘ Derivation” —the question of 


2. The evidence for‘ Dominical Institution” re-examined : 


(a) The Eucharist 


3. The evidence for Dominical Instity 


(b) “ Initiation” 


VI. Conciuston 


° 


tion” re-examined: 


PAGE 
369 
374 
377 
385 
392 


394 
399 


407 
419 


ee ee 


INTRODUCTORY 


Ir has been said that the radical difference between the Catholic 
and the Protestant presentations of Christianity consists in the 
fact that the former is built upon the idea of justification by grace 
imparted through the sacraments, and the latter upon the idea of 
justification by faith only. Like most theological epigrams, this 
sentence purchases its concise and arresting form at the cost of 
exact veracity. Yet it contains at least a kernel OLstriuticvetorst 
is a matter of common knowledge that the sacraments occupy a 
central and dominating position in the spiritual life of the Catholic 
Christian which the specifically Protestant type of devotion does 
not concede to them. A recent writer has described the part now 
played by the sacraments in Protestant Christianity as being, on the 
whole, that of “‘ optional appendages ”’ to religion! ; and the theory 
of their nature which this part presupposes may not unfairly be 
stated in the following terms :— 

1. The sacraments are not primarily “ means of grace,” but 
rather means whereby the believer publicly declares that he has 
already received grace. Considered in themselves, they are not 
signa efficacta but signa mera. 

2. They may, however, become, relatively to given indivi- 
duals, and in a secondary and improper sense, “‘ means of grace,” 
or ‘‘ efficacious signs,” in so far as their impressive dramatic 
symbolism works upon the subjective emotions of the worshipper, 
and serves as an aid to devotional auto-suggestion. “This sub- 
jective efficacy may be heightened by the reciprocal hetero- 
suggestion which the members of a devout congregation naturally 
exercise upon each other when assembled for common partici- 
pation in a solemn rite. When the collective imagination of the 
worshipping community is keyed up to a given pitch of exaltation, 
Christ may be said to be “‘present’’—in the sense that His 
universal presence is then realised with special vividness—and to 
fulfil the promise ‘‘ Where two or three are gathered together 


1 A. E. J. Rawlinson, Authority and Freedom (1924), p- 97- 
2B 


370 The Origins of the Sacraments 


in my name, there am I in the midst of them ” ; though this 
promise has no special reference to the sacraments, and may come 
to fruition in meetings for Bible study, praise, or prayer of any 
kind. 

It follows that there can be no such thing as an absolute duty to 
assist at sacramental ceremonies (except, presumably, for the officials 
who are commissioned to organise them). An individual citizen, 
who does not care for military pageantry, clearly requires no justi- 
fication for habitually absenting himself from the “ trooping of the 
colour’? ; and in like manner a Christian, who finds that the 
symbolic actions known as “‘ sacraments ”’ leave him cold, must be 
at liberty to discard them from his personal religious practice in 
favour of other modes-of approach to God more congenial to his 
temperament, without forfeiting the title of “a good Christian.” 
It cannot on this showing be affirmed that the sacraments are 
" generally necessary,” but only that they are ceteris paribus helpful, 
* for salvation.” 

In clear and unmistakable contrast with this ‘ declaratory,” 
“subjective,” and ‘optional ” theory stands that which is 
characteristic of Catholic Christianity. We may, for the sake 
of convenience, and without begging any question, describe the 
former as the “‘ minimising,” and the latter as the “ maximising ”’ 
view of the nature of sacraments. For the “ maximiser,”’ the 
sacraments are the most precious things in life, the breath of his 
nostrils and the staff of his pilgrimage. In his description of them 
the epithets “ declaratory,” ‘subjective,’ and “ optional,”’ as 
explained above, are replaced by “‘ unitive,” * objective,” and 
“ generally necessary.” He will, indeed, join with the “ mini- 
miser” in affirming the universal presence of Christ and of the 
Holy Spirit in every place and at every time; but he will add to 
this the conviction that They are specially present in the sacra- 
mental actions, not merely in the sense that the divine power 
is then imaginatively realised more than at other times, but in the 
sense that it is objectively accessible and operative in a quite unique 
degree and after a manner to which Bible-reading and the like 
offer no analogy, for the purpose of creating, maintaining, or 
restoring that secret union with God which is the basis of the 
supernatural life of the soul. And, whilst not eliminating in toto 
the idea of a certain subjective efhcacy which may be deemed to 
flow from the visible, audible, or tangible symbolism, he will 


Introductory 371 


maintain that this is always accidental and relatively unimportant, 
and may on occasion (as in the cases of the baptism of infants and 
the absolution of unconscious persons 7m extremis) be dispensed 
with altogether. If it be appropriate to translate the Catholic 
theory, like its rival, into terms of “suggestion,” it may be said 
that the thoughtful and instructed ‘“‘ maximiser”’ would not by 
any means deny that part of the efficacy of the sacraments (except 
in the two cases just mentioned) may flow from auto-suggestion 
or from congregational hetero-suggestion, though he would, in 
the light of his belief in the Communion of Saints, enlarge the 
conception of the “‘ congregation” so that it would always include 
both the whole Church militant here in earth and also “ angels, 
archangels, and all the company of heaven.” But he would also 
assert that, in addition to these influences, which represent the 
working of his own mind and of other finite minds, there is 
present an element of divine invasion and hetero-suggestion— 
a power which comes entirely from without and which trans- 
forms and quickens the emotional forces evoked by the mere 
symbolism of the rite from within, as in an estuary the brimming 
salt flood-tide of the ocean penetrates, suffuses and overwhelms 
the fresh waters of the river gliding to meet it—a mighty Energy 
which cannot be rationalised or explained away as the resultant 
of merely “endopsychic”’ factors, but proclaims itself, to those 
who have experienced it, as simply “given,” objective, cata- 
strophic, numinous. 

This conception contains an implicit challenge, which has 
been replied to by the counter-cry of ‘‘ Magic!” In so far as 
this counter-cry involves the allegation that sacramental grace is 
believed by Catholic Christians to operate irrespectively of the 
moral dispositions and will of the recipient, or to be based upon 
some supposed power of men to constrain the divine rather than 
upon the voluntary condescension of the divine to meet human 
need, its refutation may be found in any text-book of Catholic 
theology. But in so far as the term “‘ magical” is merely a dis- 
paraging synonym for “including an element of objective effica- 
ciousness,” it may be candidly admitted that the Catholic Christian 
must make up his mind to endure this reproach with equanimity. 
For it belongs to the essence of the Catholic position that the sacra- 
ments are in some sense causal; they are verae causae, and not 
merely symptoms, of the reception of grace It would be a task 


ere The Origins of the Sacraments 


of considerable complexity and difficulty, and it is in any case 
unnecessary for the purposes of this essay, to find a more precise 
definition of the mode of this causality which would be equally 
applicable to each of the specific operations of the several rites 
commonly known as “sacraments.” The task has indeed been 
attempted by Latin theology, and six centuries of speculation 
have not proved sufficient for its solution. Nor need English 
Churchmen feel themselves necessarily bound to defend any one 
of the hypotheses which have from time to time been produced 
by outstanding theologians of the West.1. ‘Though Article XXVII 
employs the ‘homist conception of “instrumental causality” in 
connection with baptism,? it would be unreasonable to assert that 
we are on that account debarred from holding, if we think fit, the 
Scotist theory of “ occasional causality,” which represents the 
sacraments not so much as causae per quas, but rather as causae 
sine quibus non, and conceives the relation between the reception 
of the outward sign and the bestowal of the inward grace as one 
of “ pre-established harmony,” resting upon the appointment of 
God. Even St. Thomas relapses into vagueness with regard to 
this subject, when he tells us that “‘ the sacraments of the Church 
have their virtue specially from the Passion of Christ, the virtue 
whereof is in a certain manner joined to us (guodam modo nobis 
copulatur) by the receiving of the sacraments.”® The theologians 
and official documents of the Eastern Church confine themselves 
to a general affirmation of a causal relation between the reception 
of the sacraments and the reception of grace, and do not attempt 
any narrower determination of this subtle and mysterious 
question. 

Such, in rough outline, are the two main theories of the place of 
the sacraments in our religion which at present divide the allegiance 
of Christians ; and though we do not forget the existence of 
mediating positions and points of view, in practice the choice pre- 
sents itself as one between two clearly contrasted alternatives. 


+ For an account of these (frequently over-subtle) speculations, see The 
Catholic Encyclopaedia, xiii. p. 302. 

* “ Baptism is not only a sign of profession, and mark of difference, whereby 
Christian men are discerned from others that be not christened: but it is also 
a sign of Regeneration or new Birth, whereby as by an instrument (per quod 
tanquam per instrumentum) they that receive Baptism rightly are grafted into 
ChesC WhUrcii sce CLC 

3 Summa Theol., III. Ixii. 5. 


Introductory 373 


The individual Christian must necessarily order his devotional life 
either on the assumption that the sacraments are “ generally 
necessary”? means of objective grace, or on the assumption that 
they are no more than optional pieces of declaratory symbolism. 
It is self-evident that such a choice must be determined by the 
mind and the purpose of the Founder of Christianity, if they can be 
discovered. But the question of our Lord’s intentions relatively 
to the place and the importance of the sacraments turns upon the 
further question, whether He can be truly said to have “ instituted ” 
sacraments or not? It is universally agreed that our Lord’s teach- 
ing, explicit and implicit, was confined to the broadest and most 
fundamental principles of Christian faith and conduct. He never 
concerned Himself with otiose or non-essential details. He did 
not act in the spirit of a Rabbinical casuist, nor lay down minute 
ceremonial ordinances for the purpose of making a “* hedge around 
the Law”; Heis not likely (if we may so say without irreverence) 
to have devised fresh modes of tithing mint, anise and cummin, 
or to have invented an improved type of phylactery. If, then, 
the true view of the sacraments is that they are “ optional 
appendages to the Christian religion,” it is not likely that they 
can be traced to His direct institution ; and, conversely, if they 
can be traced to His institution, it is certain that they must be a 
great deal more than “‘ optional appendages.” 1 venture to draw 
especial attention to this argument, inasmuch as the remainder of 
this essay presupposes its validity. If our Lord, with all His 
indifference to mere ceremonial, did actually “ institute ”’ the rites 
known as ‘‘sacraments,” then those rites must be of the very 
highest and most central importance in the Christian life 5 and It is 
dificult to see how such an importance can be ascribed to them, 
unless it is the case that through them God does something for man 
which man cannot do for himself, that is, unless they are the means 
or vehicles of supernatural grace. In other words, there would 
seem to be in logic, as there always has been in Catholic belief, a 
tenacious mutual connection and cohesion between the ideas of 
‘“‘ Dominical institution,” ‘‘ general necessity for salvation,” and 
“ objectivity of operation.” And if “* Dominical institution ”’ can 
be proved, then the further question which has sometimes been 
mooted—namely, whether it might be possible to regard the sacra- 
ments as Spirit-inspired ecclesiastical developments, which, though 
not commanded or even contemplated by the historical Jesus, have 


374. The Origins of the Sacraments 


nevertheless acquired an obligatory character through the witness 
of the Church’s corporate experience to their actual efhcacy— 
manifestly does not arise. 


If 


THe NuMBER OF THE SACRAMENTS 


Before, however, proceeding to investigate the strictly historical 
question of the “‘ Dominical institution’? of the sacraments, it is 
necessary to fix with greater precision the exact denotation of the 
term “sacraments,” as it will be used in this essay. “Lhe term 
“sacrament” has borne different significations in the history of 
the Church, varying from the indefinite meaning sanctioned by 
the usage of patristic times, when it could be applied to almost 
any solemn rite or part of a rite, to the clear-cut denotation enforced 
by the sevenfold enumeration of the Schoolmen, or the even 
more restricted enumeration familiar to us from our own formu- 
laries. Article XXV appears to confine the term ** sacrament,” 
in the sense of a rite for which divine institution can be claimed, 
to Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, describing the rest of the 
mediaeval seven (“those five commonly called sacraments an 
somewhat loose and sweeping phraseology as “‘ such as have grown 
partly of the corrupt following of the Apostles, partly are states of 
life allowed in the Scriptures ’—neither of which descriptions 
applies to Confirmation. From the standpoint of Catholic 
Christianity as interpreted by the ‘“‘ Vincentian Canon,” it would 
seem that the general distinction drawn by the compilers of the 
‘Thirty-Nine Articles between ‘sacraments of the Gospel,”’ that 
is, sacraments which belong to the very heart of the Catholic 
redemptive system-—and “‘ those that are commonly called sacra- 
ments,” that is, other rites or institutions which have been given 
the name of “sacraments” in order to make up the mystical 
number of seven—is amply justified. But it may be questioned 
whether Article X XV, the language of which, as we have pointed 
out, has been somewhat carelessly framed, draws the line at 
precisely the right point, when it places Baptism and the Lord’s 
Supper alone in the former category, and assigns all the rest of 
the mediaeval seven indiscriminately to the latter, It is certainly 
true that Matrimony is not specifically a “‘sacrament of the 


66 


The Number of the Sacraments 375 


Gospel”; for our Lord expressly declared, when He repealed 
the Mosaic permission of divorce, that He was founding nothing 
new, but merely republishing a natural law which had existed 
“from the beginning.” ! Nor is it possible, in the light of the 
historical evidence collected by Father Puller,? to describe Unction 
as a sacrament instituted by Christ ; it is rather a sacrament 
gradually shaped by the Church, during the first three centuries 
of our era, out of an indefinite and floating custom of anointing 
sick people as a means for the “spiritual healing” of physical 
disease—a custom which would seem to have been employed by 
the Twelve during our Lord’s ministry, presumably with His 
approval, and is commended by St. James, but concerning which 
it cannot be shown that our Lord gave any direct command for 
its continuance. It is doubtless the case that Ordination would 
be generally held by traditionalist Christians to be a “ Dominical 
sacrament” in the sense of resting upon our Lord’s own declared 
will ; but it can hardly be counted as a sacramentum evangelicum, 
inasmuch as its bearing upon the salvation of its recipients would 
not be claimed by any Catholic writer to be of the same direct 
and immediate character as that of Baptism, Confirmation, 
Penitence, and the Eucharist. These four, in fact, would seem 
to be sharply distinguished from the other three, either in respect 
of the origin or of the operation claimed for them or of both ; 
and it may be said that Article XXV would have represented 
the underlying mind of historical Christendom more accurately if it 
had divided the conventional “‘seven sacraments” into four of the 
first category and three of the second, rather than into two and five. 

The conclusion which follows from the foregoing considera- 
tions is, that the “‘ sacraments,’ with which we are concerned in 
this essay, and which constitute the core and foundation of Catholic 
sacramentalism (construed in accordance with the Vincentian 
Canon, and in independence of scholastic and ‘Tridentine defi- 
nitions), are four in number, namely, Baptism, Confirmation, 
Penitence, and the Eucharist or Lord’s Supper. “his enumera- 
tion is not very far different from the earliest list produced by 
ecclesiastical authority during the English Reformation, that 


1 Mark x. 5 ff. The statement above remains true, even if the **Matthaean 
exception ” (Mt. v. 32, xix. 9) be regarded as having proceeded from the lips 
of our Lord. 

2 The Anointing of the Sick in Scripture and Tradition (2nd edn. 1910). 


376 The Origins of the Sacraments 


contained in the “ Institution of a Christian Man,” or “ Bishops’ 
Book,” of 1537 5 but we may claim that our numbering appears 
to do more justice to Confirmation than the work just mentioned, 
which relegates the completion of Baptism to the same category 
as Orders and Extreme Unction.1 

It is, however, possible to simplify the subject-matter of our 
inquiry still further ; for Penitence, Baptism, and Confirmation 
were in primitive Catholicism not three distinct sacraments, but 
rather parts of, or moments in, one great cleansing, regenerating, 
and Spirit-imparting rite, which was conceived as both sym- 
bolising and effecting the complete transition of the soul from 
sin and heathenism to full Christian life ; which in the earliest 
days had no one authoritative name, but seems to have been 
vaguely and popularly designated as “ making the act of faith” 
(miotetcur) or “ being illuminated ” (pwrtCeobar) or even as 
“baptism”? tout court, but understood as including both the 
preliminary Penitence and the subsequent Laying on of Hands. 
This single original rite of entrance to Christianity we will 
designate by the word “ Initiation.” It is worth while observing, 
in order to elucidate certain issues which will appear at a later 
point in this essay, that the main historical factor which has split 
this single initiatory rite into three is the rise and universal diffusion 
of the custom of “infant baptism,” an ecclesiastical development 
of which the New Testament writings contain no mention. What 
is now known in the West as “‘ Confirmation” is the conclusion 
of the initiatory rite, cut off and made into a separate sacrament, 
which is postponed until the arrival of the neophyte at “ years of 
discretion,” in order that at least a part of the process by which 
admission is gained to full membership in the Church of Christ 
may be experienced by him under conditions of full consciousness 
and intelligent responsibility.2. And what is known in both West 
and East as ‘‘ Penitence”’ or “ Penance ” (poenttentia, LETAVOLE), 
which normally, though not invariably,? involves an oral con- 

1 C. Lloyd, Formularies of Faith put forth by Authority during the Reign of 
Henry VIII (1856 edn.), pp. 128, 129. 

2 This separation of Confirmation from Baptism did not become universal 
in the West until the sixteenth century ; and it is still unknown in the East, 
where the Chrism which is believed to be “‘ the seal of the gift of Holy Spirit ”’ 
is administered immediately after Baptism, even to infants. 

* For an account of the circumstances under which, according to present 


Latin discipline, Penance may be administered without any oral confession, see 
Schieler-Heuser, Theory and Practice of the Confessional (1906), p. 645 ff, 


The Evidence of the New Testament 377 


fession of sin by the penitent, is the beginning of Initiation, 
detached from its original context and formed into a substantive 
rite to serve as a remedy for post-baptismal sin, a “second plank 
after shipwreck” ; and post-baptismal sin is a phenomenon which 
in the nature of things is more frequent when Baptism 1s habitually 
administered to unconscious infancy than when it is received only 
by adults as the crown and seal of a conscious conversion of the 
will to God.! But Initiation is still very generally performed, 
in its primitive shape, as a single unitary process including 
Confession, Washing, and Laying on of Hands, in the mission 
field, where most catechumens are still persons of adult age, and 
occasionally in Christian countries, also in the case of adults. 

The two fundamental sacraments, therefore, which form the 
irreducible core or nucleus of the conventional septenary scheme, 
are Initiation and the Supper of the Lord. It is the historical 
connection of these with the Founder of Christianity which we 
now propose to investigate. 


Il 


Tur Evipence OF THE New ‘TESTAMENT 


Such an investigation would, two centuries ago, have been a 
comparatively simple task, as it still would be if the New ‘Testament 
documents were universally and unquestioningly accepted at their 
face value. If we leave out of account the inconsiderable “ Sacra- 
mentarian ”’ and Socinian sects on the Continent, and the Quakers 
in England, it will be true to say that all theologians of the pre- 
critical epoch—Roman, Anglican, Reformed, Lutheran—were 
united in affirming that the Dominical institution of Baptism, at 
least, is proved—not merely by the regular administration of this 
rite to converts from the Day of Pentecost onwards, and by the 
exalted language in which New Testament writers describe its 
spiritual import, as a mystical participation in the death, burial, 
and resurrection of the Redeemer,? and as the “ laver of regenera- 
tion ” 8—but by indubitable words of the Lord Himself ; firstly, 
those in which He foretold to Nicodemus the necessity of the 


1 This is not necessarily an argument against the custom of infant baptism ; 


see below, p. 412, 0. I. ie 
2 Rom. vi. 3-9. 3 routedv maAuyyeveotac, Tit. ii. 5. 


Zayas, The Origins of the Sacraments 


new birth “of water and the Spirit”? for all who would enter 
the Kingdom of God! ; secondly, the solemn charge addressed to 
the ‘I'welve by the risen Christ, in which He formally instituted 
the sacrament, enjoining His hearers to “ make disciples of all 
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the 
Son and of the Holy Ghost.” 2 Doubtless there was not the 
same unanimity in regard to Confirmation and Penitence ; but 
the Dominical institution of the Eucharist, once more, would 
have seemed self-evident to all, or nearly all, Christian thinkers, 
despite their diversity of opinion as to the right doctrinal inter- 
pretation of this supremely sacred rite. The command “ This 
do in remembrance of me,’’ embodied once in the Textus Receptus 
of St. Luke’s Gospel? and twice in St. Paul’s account of the Last 
Supper,* combined with the declaration ‘‘ Except ye eat the flesh 
of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have no life in 
you . . .,° would have appeared so overwhelmingly conclusive 
in regard to our Lord’s intentions of founding a permanent means 
of communion with and commemoration of Himself, that they 
would hardly have felt it in need of support from the practice of 
the Apostolic Church or the teaching of others of the canonical 
books. And when it is remembered that, for theologians of the 
epoch which we have mentioned, these testimonies were set, as 
it were, in the adamantine framework of a verbally inspired 
volume, thus sharing in its supernatural inerrancy, it will be 
seen that for many centuries the question of the Dominical 
institution of the greater sacraments was not so much settled as 
incapable a priori of being discussed. 

‘Those who are acquainted with the present position of the 
minute critical and historical investigations, which have been for 
the last century and still are being carried out with reference to 
the origins of Catholic Christianity, will not need to be reminded 
that such a general agreement amongst theological scholars is 
now a thing of the past, and that the connection of the sacraments 
with the historical Jesus is precisely one of the matters which are 
most hotly disputed. It will be convenient at this point to 
sketch briefly the change which has come over the attitude of 
Christian scholars towards the Scriptural testimonies just quoted. 


1 John iii. s. 2 Matt. xxviii. 19. 
* Luke xxiisa9, pay LBL a RE UY, 
SHON vie Ray 


The Evidence of the New Testament 379 


Not only has the belief in the divinely guaranteed literal inerrancy 
of the sacred volume vanished, so far as we can see for ever, but 
the historical reliability of the principal proof-texts, considered 
merely as human evidence, is called in question. ‘This is specially 
true of those which, like the Nicodemus passage, occur in the 
Fourth Gospel. It is no longer possible to assume that the 
sayings attributed to Christ by the great mystical writer whom 
we know as “St. John” represent verbatim reports of His 
ipsissima verba, reproduced with phonographic accuracy. Even 
the most conservative estimate of the value of the Fourth Gospel 
must admit that the discourse-matter embodied in it is to be 
regarded rather as a unique blend of Dominical teaching and of 
the Evangelist’s own meditations, a blend in which it is now all 
but impossible to distinguish the two ingredients, than as a bare 
transcript, without commentary, of some of Christ’s actual sayings. 
Hence we are not at present in a position to rule out the suggestion 
that the saying about “water and the Spirit” in John iii. may 
represent not so much what our Lord actually said on any given 
occasion as what the Evangelist, after a lifetime spent in the 
fellowship of baptized and spirit-endowed people, was convinced 
that He meant; and so long as this possibility remains open, 
the scientific inquirer will be debarred from using these words 
(for all the depths of spiritual truth and splendour which he may 
discern in them) as assured historical evidence for the conscious 
prevision by our Lord, during His earthly lifetime, of the saving 
effects which Christian Initiation would have during the long 
centuries which were to succeed His death. 

Similar considerations apply to the cardinal proof-text tradi- 
tionally adduced on behalf of the Dominical institution of 
Baptism, Matt. xxvill. 19. It is now generally agreed, amongst 
Biblical scholars other than those of the Roman Catholic Church, 
that the Gospel which stands first in our New Testament can 
only be described as that “according to Matthew” in the sense 
that it may include sections of a work by him, perhaps the “‘ Logia ”’ 
stated by Papias to have been compiled in Aramaic by the Apostle 
Matthew.t “The same consensus of critical opinion affirms that 
the final editor of this Gospel, whoever he was, cannot have been 
an eyewitness of the events which he records (his dependence 
upon the Marcan narrative is enough to prove this); and that 


1 Eus. HEL. iii. 39. 


380 The Origins of the Sacraments 


his editorial principles and methods permitted him a degree of 
freedom in the way of edifying and haggadic modification or 
amplification of his sources which is hardly in accordance with 
the more exacting standards of modern biography, and which 
(In one or two passages +) is utilised in a manner reminiscent of 
the unrestrained thaumaturgy of the extra-canonical Gospels. 
If this be so, it is difficult to discover any consideration which 
decisively excludes the suggestion that ‘‘ Matthew’s”’ attribution 
of the baptismal charge to the risen Christ may be dogma couched 
in a quasi-historical form, rather than history proper: that it 
represents not so much what Christ actually said as what the 
Christians of c. 80 A.D. were convinced that He ought to, and 
must, have said. Such -a suggestion draws a certain amount of 
force from the fact that the text Matt. xxviii. 19 contains the 
Threefold Name in its most clear-cut and technical form, 
“Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ’”—a form which occurs nowhere 
else in the New ‘Testament, and of which the next recorded 
instance is to be found in the Didache * (which can hardly be dated 
earlier than a.p. 100). It is urged that a literal acceptation of 
** Matthew’s”’ statement, that the use of the Threefold Name 
was prescribed at the very beginning of Christian history by the 
supreme authority of the risen Lord, is incompatible with a candid 
interpretation of the Acts and Epistles, which show that Baptism 
was for long administered “‘ in the Name of Jesus” only, and that 
the doctrine of the Trinity itself, as summed up in the scholastically 
precise formula, “‘ Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,” was the com- 
paratively late product of a slow and gradual development, which 
even in St. Paul’s lifetime had not advanced further than the 
embryonic stage reflected in the primitive benediction “‘’ The 
grace of our Lord Jesus Messiah, and the love of God, and the 
fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with you all.” 4 But if it is a 
possible supposition that the final editor of the first Gospel has 

1 F.g. xvii. 27 (the stater in the fish’s mouth) ; xxvii. 52, 53 (the resurrection 
of the “ saints ’’). 

2 The suggestion, first made by F. C. Conybeare, in the Zeitschr. f. N.T. 
Wissensch., 1901, p. 275 ff., and afterwards adopted by Prof. Kirsopp Lake in 
his inaugural lecture before the University of Leyden, that the words “ bap- 
tizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost ” 
are a late dogmatic interpolation into the text of St. Matthew, has been effec- 
tively dealt with by the late Dr. F. H. Chase, Yournal of Theological Studies, vi. 


483 ff., ““ The Lord’s Command to Baptize,” and need not be considered here. 
eo A) COn xii ata 


The Evidence of the New Testament 381 


(doubtless with the best intentions) read back the developed 
Trinitarian theology of his own day into the baptismal command, 
the suspicion is inevitably aroused that the baptismal command 
itself may be no more than a dogmatic projection upon the back- 
eround of the past. Such reflections do not, indeed, constitute a 
decisive disproof of the Matthaean affirmation of the formal 
institution of Baptism by Christ ; but they are thought by many 
to remove it from the category of reliable evidence into that of 
uncertain statements, on which it would be precarious to build 
a historical case. But if both of the sayings on which the 
Dominical institution of Baptism is based recede into the limbo of 
the historically dubious, the institution itself recedes with them : 
and the field is left open for the hypothesis now widely accepted 
by the Protestant scholars of the Continent, that the origins of 
Christian Baptism are to be found, not in any word or declared 
intention of Jesus, but rather in the Jewish custom of the baptism 
of proselytes, or in the baptism of John—one or other of which 
is assumed to have been continued, on their own authority, by the 
earliest disciples as a natural but purely non-mystical method of 
symbolising admission to the Christian group, to have been gradu- 
ally invested, by tradition and usage and other factors which will 
claim attention presently, with a supernatural awe, and to have 
been finally ascribed, by a process of ex post facto reasoning familiar 
to all students of ancient religion, to the command of the Saviour 
Himself. 

The evidence for Christ’s institution of the Eucharist, as a 
permanent rite designed to be celebrated after His death and in 
memory of it, has undergone a similar process of attrition. It 1s 
not denied that our Lord at the Last Supper blessed a loaf and a 
cup, and gave them to His disciples, declaring them to be, in some 
sense, His body and His blood; but the question which is 
debated is that of the intention with which He did so. Was the 
solemn action, which He then performed, of a purely ad hoc 
nature, consummated once and for all with the view of impressing 
upon the circle of His intimate friends, and upon them only, the 
significance of the terrible events which lay before Him ? or did 
He consciously mean to found a definite liturgical or sacramental 
ceremony, to be continued by His followers after His visible 
presence should have been removed from the earth? If we 
could be certain that His lips actually uttered the command 


382 The Origins of the Sacraments 


“This do in remembrance of me” (rotto noteite ete thy SUNY 
avauvynow), the question would be settled. But this crucial 
saying, which has hitherto been taken to constitute the main, if 
not the only Scriptural ground for believing that our Lord intended 
His action to be repeated, is preserved only in the Gospel of 
st. Luke (according to the generally received text) and in St. 
Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians. And its occurrence in 
the text of the third Gospel is now held to be highly questionable, 
inasmuch as it is omitted, at this point, by the great fifth-century 
Graeco-Latin Codex D, by four Old Latin MSS.,2 by ‘Tatian, 
and the Jerusalemitic Old Syriac—facts which have caused such 
careful and conservative scholars as Westcott and Hort to excise 
it from the Lucan account of the Last Supper, as a ‘“ Western 
non-interpolation ”? which has crept into the text of St. Luke 
through scribal assimilation to 1 Cor. xi. 24, 25.2 The statement, 
therefore, that Jesus commanded His disciples to repeat in memory 
of Him the symbolic actions which He performed at the Last 
Supper must, in the present state of our knowledge, be taken as 
coming to us on the authority of St. Paul, and of St. Paul only 
But the authority of St. Paul, in regard to a matter of historical 
fact of which he cannot, in the nature of the case, have been 
an eyewitness, is very far from being unchallenged. It is not, 
indeed, disputed that the Apostle of the Gentiles was in all good 
faith reproducing what he had learnt from the nucleus of original 
disciples, who had known the Lord in the flesh. But, as in the 
case of the Matthaean command to baptize, the possibility that the 
injunction “This do in remembrance of me” may be due to 
unconscious aetiological invention spontaneously recurs to the 
mind. A comparison of the four versions (given by the three 
Synoptists and St. Paul) of the words spoken by Christ at the 
delivery of the Bread and of the Cup reveals the fact that no one 
version agrees precisely with any other, and textual criticism 
suggests that St. Luke’s autograph may have placed the distribu- 
tion of the Cup (without the words “ This is my blood’’) before 
that of the Bread.? It is a reasonable inference from the some- 
what confused state of the evidence that the Apostolic Church 


Aral l (34. 

* The New Testament in Greek (1881), Appendix, pp. 63, 64. 

° Dal ff? iomit Luke xxii. 19b-20, thus making the cup of v. 17 to be the 
Eucharistic Cup. 


The Evidence of the New Testament 383 


was not in possession of a single, uniform, and rigidly stereotyped 
account of our Lord’s sayings and doings at the Last Supper. 
But if such oral tradition as existed continued to be fluid for some 
Hecades after the event to which it refers, it is not by any means 
impossible that the words “This do”? may have imperceptibly 
crept into that stream of it which was destined to reach St. Paul, 
as an ex post facto legitimation of a custom, originally perhaps 
based on mere sentiment, of repeating at the common meal of the 
Christian community, in remembrance of the Master, the sig- 
nificant acts which He had performed at “the last sad supper 
with His own.” If this suspicion is justifiable, the Eucharistic 
command ‘“‘ Do this . . .” joins the baptismal command “* Make 
disciples of all the nations, baptizing them .. .” in the twilit 
realm of historical uncertainties. “The solitary link connecting 
the sacramental practice of the Church with the intentions of the 
Master has been, if not irretrievably snapped, at least attenuated 
to a degree of fragility at which it can no longer bear the strain 
which the traditional theory of the Eucharist demands. 

It might be objected that, even if the cogency of the foregoing 
considerations be admitted, they do not prove that our Lord did 
not institute the sacraments, but only that the existing docu- 
mentary evidence is insufficient to show that He did. And it 
might further be suggested that there is at least a possibility of 
basing the belief in the Dominical institution, not so much upon 
a couple of proof-texts as upon the universal and immemorial 
custom of Christendom, which would seem to imply a source 
not less authoritative than the will of the Saviour Himself. But 
at this point the non-Catholic critic produces his final, apparently 
irresistible and overwhelming argument, which (if its validity be 
admitted) becomes in his hands a logical flail or bludgeon whereby 
all the attempts of the Catholic apologist to find a basis for 
traditional sacramentalism in the words and actions of Jesus are 
mercilessly smitten to the ground. ‘This argument is founded 
upon the assumption of the eschatologically limited outlook of Jesus. 
During His lifetime (it is contended) Jesus believed that the 
existing world-order was on the point of dissolution, that the 
lightnings and terrors of the End might at any moment burst 
upon mankind, that within a space of time to be measured by 
months He Himself would be caught up and transfigured in 
celestial glory, and would return on the clouds of heaven to 


384 The Origins of the Sacraments 


inaugurate the Messianic millennium upon a supernaturally 
rejuvenated earth. Hence He can neither have foreseen nor 
provided for the long history which the movement kindled by His 
words was in fact destined to have upon this planet: He can 
have “ founded,” or “ instituted,’ nothing—neither Church, nor 
hierarchy, nor sacraments. If this position, which Friedrich 
Heiler describes as “‘the Copernican achievement of modern 
theology,’ + really represents the facts, then cadit quaestio: it 
becomes unnecessary even to examine the evidence for 
‘‘ Dominical institution,” and the hypothesis of a fortuitous origin of 
the present Christian sacraments assumes the character of inevita- 
bility. Just as Christian Baptism is (on this showing) to be 
regarded as the accidental survival of the Jewish proselyte-baptism, 
utilised by the common sense of the new movement as a symbolic 
means of admitting new adherents, so the Lord’s Supper is the 
relic of the Jewish Kzddish, or sanctification of the Sabbath or of 
a great feast by the blessing of bread and wine on its eve,? a 
ceremony which Jesus had in the circle of His friends and hearers 
occasionally invested with the additional significance of a ritual 
rehearsal of the “ Messianic banquet,” which on the last evening 
of His life He had employed as an acted parable of His imminent 
death, and which His followers continued to observe at their 
club-meal or Agape, from habit or feeling rather than from any 
reasoned theory, as a commemoration or reminder to themselves 
both of His death and of His future return. For the first few 
years of Christianity, therefore, these observances were no more 
than harmless pieces of sentimental symbolism, with no specifically 
“ sacramental ”’ significance, created or adopted by the Christian 
community to express its collective emotions on certain solemn 
occasions. Many non-Catholic critics would add, that it would 
have been well if they had remained on this level. 


1 Der Katholizismus (1923), p. 3: ‘‘ Die Erkenntnis des eschatologischen 
Charakters seines Evangeliums ist die kopernikanische Tat der modernen 
Theologie ; mit einem Schlage stiirzt sie das katholische Dogmensystem um.” 

2 Cf. A. Loisy, Les Evangiles Synoptiques, il. p. 542, n. 4. The Kiddish 
may in any case well have been the foundation of the Christian Eucharist 3 see 
G. H. Box, “ The Jewish Antecedents of the Eucharist,” JFournal of Theological 
Studies, ill. 357. 


The Mystery Religions 385 


IV 


Tue ‘* Mystery RELIGIons ”’ 


The theory just sketched requires as its natural complement 
an explanation of the manner in which the innocuous customs 
presupposed by it became transformed into the Catholic sacraments 
of Initiation and Communion, as known to St. Paul, St. John, 
St. Ignatius, and St. Justin Martyr, and all or practically all 
subsequent Christian thinkers and writers down to the sixteenth 
century of our era. “This explanation is found by a consensus of 
non-Catholic scholarship in the well-known “‘ Mystery-religion ” 
hypothesis, which, though familiar to classical and theological 
students, may be briefly summarised here, in order that the logical 
bearings of the complete anti-traditionalist case may be fully 
exposed. 

If we leave out of account the bizarre phenomenon of Caesar- 
worship, it is true to say that official ‘‘ paganism,” that is, the 
established religious system or systems with which Christianity 
found itself confronted when for the first time it spread beyond the 
borders of Palestine into Northern Syria, Asia Minor, and Europe, 
consisted of an immense multitude of localised and mutually 
independent cults, closely associated for the most part with the 
life of the State and of its provinces and municipalities.1_ Where 
they did not represent mere survivals of primitive magic and 
fetichism, these ‘‘ established’ cults were based on a strictly 
commercial view of the relation between the gods and their 
worshippers, the god being bound to protect the State or the 
municipality in return for a given guantum of sacrifices, but 
otherwise being under no obligation to interest himself in the 
community or its members. It will be clear that so purely 
contractual a system did not even pretend to satisfy the deeper 
spiritual needs or aspirations of the individual soul, nor were its 
ministers conceived to be invested with what we know as 
“pastoral”? functions. A Roman who was oppressed by the 
enigma of the universe, by the weight of unmerited misfortune, 
or by the sense of personal guilt, would no more have thought of 


1 Tt is not necessary for the purposes of this brief sketch to take account 
of private or semi-private worships, such as the cults of the Attic phratries or 
the sacra gentilicia at Rome. 

2G 


3 86 The Origins of the Sacraments 


applying to the famen Dialis or to the quindecemviri sacris faciundis 
for ghostly aid and comfort than of confiding in the Prefect of the 
Praetorian Guards. Moreover, such reality as the official cults 
had once possessed had long since been drained out of them, so 
far as the educated classes were concerned, by the widespread 
scepticism, which had made it impossible to believe in the sub- 
stantive and personal reality of the members of the conventional 
Pantheon. Even those who, under the influence of the most 
remarkable Hellenic-Oriental religious teacher of the last two 
centuries B.c., Posidonius of Apamea,! had won their way to a 
philosophic monotheism, seem to have made no effort to relate 
their creed to the traditional State religion : Cicero’s quotation 
of Cato’s cynical apophthegm, about the difficulty which two 
haruspices must have felt in keeping straight faces when they met 
in the street, illustrates vividly the utter deadness of the old 
ceremonies, even for a man whose patriotism, no less than his 
religious feelings, would naturally have disposed him to make the 
best of them.? 

It is not surprising that, during the centuries which imme- 
diately preceded and followed the birth of Christ, men who felt 
the need of a vital and personal religion should have turned away 
from the desiccated State ceremonies to the warm emotional 
‘‘ Mystery Religions” ; which, in virtue of their private char- 
acter and their interest in the destiny of the individual soul, may 
without undue anachronism be styled the “ evangelical noncon- 
formity”” of the pagan world, and which, in the eyes of the 
prosaic populations of the West, were endued with a unique 
glamour by the fact that they came from the wonder-world of 
the East, the immemorial home of religion. Of those mystery- 
cults, some, like those of the Eleusinian Demeter and the 
“Great Gods” or Kabeiroi of Samothrace, were strictly localised, 
being capable of celebration only by a priesthood resident at 
some particular spot, as in the case of the Eumolpidae at Eleusis, 
though the votaries who had once been initiated might be, and 
doubtless were, scattered all over the civilised world; others 
were of a more avowedly “‘ catholic ”’ or “‘ oecumenical ”’ character 
in respect of their organisation, which was not tied down to a 


+ The latest study of this enigmatic personage appears to be K. Reinhardt, 
Poseidonios (Munich, 1921). 
4Cic. De Div, Lexx. 


The Mystery Religions 387 


single centre, but covered the whole Empire with a network 
of shrines and priestly colleges. “Ihe most important of these 
were the four great faiths which respectively clustered around 
the divine persons of Dionysus the Hunter (Zagreus), Isis the 
Egyptian queen of heaven, Cybele the sorrowful Mother of Asia , 
Minor, and Mithra the hero-god of Persia, patron of soldiers, 
whose altars have been found in Roman military stations from the | 
Euphrates to the Solway. ‘To these must be added a host of lesser 
cults such as those of Atargatis, Adonis, Hermes ‘Trismegistos,! 
and the like. ‘These various faiths were propagated by the 
Diasporai of the nations in which they had originated, much as 
Judaism was propagated by the Diaspora or “dispersion” of 
Israel : and the syncretistic tendencies of the age enabled them 
to borrow from each other, and to fuse their usages and even the 
personalities of their gods, in every kind of proportion. If the 
Metamorphoses of Apuleius may be trusted, the ethical levels of 
their professional exponents ranged from the most austere virtue 
to the vilest charlatanism. 

The roots, from which the Mystery Religions sprang are not 
dificult to discern. Some, such as the Eleusinian and Egyptian~\, 
mysteries, were developments of the vegetation-myth common to 
many primitive peoples, which personifies the vital force of nature, 
apparently dying in the winter and blossoming into fresh life in 
the spring, as a god who dies and rises again : others, such as the 
Orphic mysteries, appear to be built upon survivals of totemic 
ceremonial. But our knowledge of their fully developed contents, 
theological and ritual, is exceedingly fragmentary, a fact which is 
due partly to the faithfulness with which the initiates observed 
their pledge of secrecy, and partly to the crusade conducted by the 
victorious Christian Church, after its establishment by Constantine, 
against the shrines and sacred books of its rivals. Enough, how- 
ever, remains, both of literary and of archaeological evidence, to 
furnish us with some conception of their broad underlying ideas. 

The basal human need which all alike claimed to satisfy was 
the craving of the sick soul for “salvation” (soterta). “The 
“ filure of nerve,” 2 which afflicted great masses of the popu- 

1 But see below, p. 392, N- 3- 

2 ‘The phrase is borrowed from the heading of c. iv., in Five Stages of Greek 

Religion (Prof. Gilbert Murray, 1925). The whole chapter is an incomparable 


sketch of the popular emotional background which was common both to 
Christianity and to the Mystery Religions. 


388 The Origins of the Sacraments 


lation during the first century of our era, the widespread pessimism 
and world-weariness which supervened upon the close of the 
Roman civil wars, appeared in the consciousness of the individual 
as a nameless and oppressive fear—a fear of the universe, of the 
ruthless power of Fate, of the malefic influences of the stars, of 
annihilation at death, orof the torments of Tartarus. It was from 
this fear that the ‘‘ Mystery Religions” promised deliverance, 
bestowed by a philanthropic “ Lord” (Kyrios) or ‘‘ Saviour” 
(Soter), who himself had known the anguish of death, or at least 
of poignant sorrow or laborious toil, and who, as it is alleged, j 
promised to transfuse the virtue of his own divine life into the! 
soul of his votary, assuring the latter thereby of pardon, inward) 
peace, and a blessed immortality, through rites of a sacramental 
character. As the chief needs of the religious soul are purity and 
inward strength, it was natural, indeed inevitable, that these rites 
should have taken the forms ofa cleansing bath and of a sacred meal. 
We are here upon very uncertain ground, and it is impossible 
to say whether sacramentalism was strictly universal in these 
cults or not. In the rites of Eleusis we hear of a preliminary 
bath in the sea prescribed for the mystae,! and the cistern or /acus 
discovered by Sir William Ramsay in the sanctuary at Pisidian 
Antioch appears to have been used for baptismal purposes.? 
Demosthenes scoffs at the baptism of the Phrygian Cybele, as 
carried out by Aeschines in his youth, acting as the acolyte of his 
mother, a strolling priestess 3 ; and, in the romance of Apuleius 
which gives us the most exhaustive account now surviving of 
Isiac initiation, the candidate Lucius undergoes a bath and a 
ceremonial lustration to prepare him for his enlistment in the 
service of the goddess. But the most striking parallel (in respect 
of the spiritual effects claimed for it) to Christian Initiation is to 
‘be found in the tawrobolium or criobolium, that is, the bath in the 
‘blood of a slain beast, bull or ram, which admitted men to the 
mysteries of Cybele and Attis, and may have been borrowed from 
them by the cult of Mithras®; some sepulchral inscriptions 


1 grade wvotar; see L. R. Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, iii. p. 168. 

2 W. M. Ramsay, The Teaching of Paul in Terms of the Present Day (1913), 
p. 287 ff. 

3 Dem. de Coron. 313. 4 Apuleius, Metamorph. xi. 23. 

* Cumont, however, thinks that the taurobolium was never strictly a part 
of the Mithraic liturgy (Textes et monuments figurés relatifs aux mystéres de 
Mithra, i. p. 334). For the criobolium, see Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encvcel., iv. 
p- 1718, $.U. 


The Mystery Religions 389 


testify to the faith of those who had received this horrible rite 
that they had thereby become “ eternally regenerate,” renati in 


aeternum.1 Evidence for sacred meals is tantalisingly sporadic4-~~ 


and fragmentary. “The most certain instance 1s to be found in 
the omophagia of the Orphic mysteries, in which the delirious 
worshippers tore to pieces the sacred ox, believed anciently— 
though whether in historic times or not, we cannot say—to be 
the incarnation of Dionysus, and devoured its flesh raw.? Sacred 
meals, including both food and drink, appear to have occurred in 
the mysteries of Attis,? and of the Kabeiroi* ; and the rites of 
Eleusis included the drinking of a mixed cup (the so-called 
xuxewy) which may or may not have had a sacramental signi- 
ficance.> Probably the Mithraic sacred meal of bread and water 
mixed with Aaoma-juice should be added to the list,® though it 
is possible that this ceremony was a deliberate imitation of, and 
therefore not a true pagan parallel to, the Christian Eucharist. 
This list embodies the principal instances of (apparent) sacra- 
mentalism in the pagan mystery-cults. We cannot, however, tell 
that there may not have been more; and it is a reasonable pre- 
sumption that those which we have enumerated would have 
familiarised the inhabitants of Syria, Asia Minor, and Greece, 
amongst whom the first expansion of Christianity outside the 
borders of Palestine took place, with the ideas of cathartic lustra- 
tions and sacramental, perhaps even of “ theophagic,” meals. It 
is suggested that the specifically Catholic conceptions of Initiation 
and the Eucharist are the product of a gradual infiltration of such 
ideas into Christianity from the mystery-faiths described above, 
a process for the inception of which, it is contended, St. Paul must 
bear the chief responsibility.? “The Apostle is not, indeed, accused 


1 Other inscriptions, however, imply that the effect of this blood-baptism 
was only supposed to last for twenty years. 

2 See J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, pp. 482-92 3 
A. Loisy, Les mystéres paiens et le mystére chrétien (1914), p. 32 ff. 

3 Farnell, of. cit. ili. 187. APIDIG a 1NA19 5: 5 Ibid. iil. 186, 195. 

6 F. Cumont, Les mystéres de Mithra (1913), p. 163. 

7 It should be said that Harnack (Mission and Expansion of Christianity, 
E. tr., 1908, i. p. 230), and two distinguished British scholars, Prof. H. A. A. 
Kennedy (St. Paul and the Mystery Religions, 1913), and Dr. T. R. Glover 
(Paul of Tarsus, 1925, p. 161 ff.), favour or seem to favour a modified form of 
the “Mystery” theory, which finds the influence of the pagan Mysteries 
clearly manifested in later Catholicism, but not in the writings of St. Paul, 
who is thus exempted from the responsibility alluded to above. This position, 
however, appears ultimately to rest upon the assumption that there is an essential 


390 The Origins of the Sacraments 


of having, consciously and with his eyes open, embarked upon a 
policy of paganising Christianity in order to commend it to the 
Phrygian and Anatolian populations. ‘The theory is rather that 
his first converts,! on being admitted to the Christian fellowship, 
and finding that it revered a human Messiah as, in some undefined 
sense, the ‘“‘son of God,” that it admitted new adherents by means 
of a ceremonial washing, and that it celebrated a common meal 
with special and sentimental reference to the death of its hero 
and prophet, naturally thought of all these matters in terms of 
the mystery cults with which they were familiar : in other words, 
that they envisaged Jesus, the Jewish-Christian Messiah, as a 
Kyrios,2 a mystery-god analogous to Attis, Serapis, Mithras, and 
the other pagan Kyrioi or Redeemers® ; that they interpreted the 
harmless symbol of Baptism as a mysterious and awful sacrament 
of regeneration, and the “‘ eschatologised Kiddish,” which con- 
cluded the club-feast, as a realistic participation in the body and 
blood of the Kyrios. But, instead of striving with might and 
main to exclude the infiltration of these alien ideas (the theory 
goes on) St. Paul weakly acquiesced in them. “The Apostle, or 
his immediate coadjutors and epigoni, found that the work of 
evangelisation was immensely simplified and accelerated if the 
pagan inquirer could be addressed in the terminology already 
familiar to him, and if the Gospel could be represented as “ the 
last,” and the only true, “‘ word”? in Mystery Religions. Stated 
in this way, Christianity spread with a surprising rapidity ; and 
St. Paul not merely accepted this transformation as expedient, 
but actually came to believe in it as true. By a kind of un- 


6 6 


incompatibility between the ‘‘ ethical’’ and the “‘ objectively sacramentalist ”’ 
conceptions of Christianity ; and as (for the reasons explained in our intro- 
ductory section) we repudiate this assumption, we may be permitted for the 
purpose of this essay to confine ourselves to the more thoroughgoing form of 
the “‘ Mystery ’ hypothesis, as set forth by its leading Continental expositors. 

1 W. Bousset, Kyrios Christos (1921), p. 99, suggests that the beginnings of 
the transformation described above should be placed in the primitive Christian 
community of Antioch, the first Gentile-Christian Church to come into 
existence, before St. Paul’s missionary journeys. 

2 See W. Bousset, Kyrios Christos (1921), c. lll. pp. 75-104. 

3 The words of St. Paul in 1 Cor. viii. 5 f. ‘“‘ For even if there are so-called 
gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as there are many ‘ gods” and many 
‘ Kyrioi’), yet for us there is one God, the Father . . . and one Kyrios, Jesus 
Messiah . . .” show that the idea of a parallelism between Christ and the 
Pagan Redeemers existed in St. Paul’s mind ; but it will be argued later that 
parallel conceptions need not be related as cause and effect. 


The Mystery Religions 391 


conscious auto-suggestion, he persuaded himself that Baptism and 
the “‘ Lord’s Supper ” really were and could do what the Mithraic 
taurobolium and the Dionysiac omophagia only pretended to be and 
to do, and that the Eucharist, at least, had been explicitly instituted 
by Jesus as a mystery of sacramental might. Christianity thus 
became Catholicism, and its triumph in the Graeco-Roman world 
was purchased at the cost of a surrender to the pagan sacramentalism 
which it should have resisted to the death. 

Though considerations of space forbid us to dilate upon the 
matter now, it is worth while to emphasise the fact that the 
“« Mystery-Religion ” theory of the origins of the sacraments (or 
rather of the origins of the belief in their objective efficacy) does 
not stand by itself; it is part and parcel of a wider thesis, namely, 
what may be called the “ Mystery-Religion” theory of the 
origins of Catholicism in general, including the idea of Christ as 
a pre-existent Divine being and that conception of God which 
is ultimately necessitated by a “ pre-existence” Christology, 
namely, the idea of the Trinity. The solidarity of the whole 
religionsgeschichtliche explanation of Catholicism is understood well 
enough in Germany, though in England there seems to be a 
tendency to speak and write as though its purview were confined 
to the sole question of the significance of the sacraments. But 
such an impartial witness as Heiler will tell us that neither in 
history nor in logic is it possible to dissociate the idea of Jesus as 
“* Kyrlos ”’ from the ideas of Initiation and the Supper as 
“ Mysteries.” 1 The educated Catholic, from his own point of 
view, may be grateful for the implied admission that Catholic 
Christology and Catholic sacramentalism are interdependent. 
But, from the point of view of the “ Mystery ” hypothesis, the 
Christ of traditional dogma ts a generalised blend of Attis, Osiris, 
and Mithras, wearing as a not too-well-fitting mask the features 
of Jesus of Nazareth ; and the Christocentric mysticism which 
is the heart of Catholic devotion is derived from Hellenistic- , 
Oriental paganism, not from anything believed by Israel or taught | 
by Jesus Himself. The silent recollection, with which the 
Catholic believer, kneeling in some still and empty church, fixes 
his eyes upon the Rood, becomes but the after-glow of the 
emotions with which the Mithraic initiate, in some crypt or 
chapel of the warrior-god, contemplated the Tauroctony, or 

1 Cf. Der Katholixismus, pp. 48) 49- 


392 The Origins of the Sacraments 


carven retablo depicting the slaying of the mystic bull. ‘The 
lights and the Alleluyas of the Christian Easter are in great measure 
but the mirage-like reflection of the joy which filled the devotees 
of Attis, when on the Hilaria, the crowning day of the vernal 
commemoration of his passion, the chief priest whispered to them, 
as he administered the sacramental balm, ‘‘ The God has been 
saved |? 1 


Vv 


CRITIQUE OF THE ‘‘ Mystery’? Hyporuests 


Such in outline is the great, modern, skilfully articulated and 
impressively coherent, a/ternative explanation of the genesis of 
Catholicism which now confronts the traditional belief in the 
Deity of Christ and in His direct institution of the sacraments.2 
If this alternative explanation can establish itself as the truth, 
there is an end of historic Christianity as we know it. On the 
other hand, if it can be shown to rest on arbitrary assumptions and 
to involve historical or psychological impossibilities, the traditional 
theory will remain in possession of the field. ‘The scope of this 
essay 1s necessarily limited to the question of the sacraments only ; 
and a few words regarding the method which we propose to follow 
In examining the “ Mystery’ theory will conduce to clearness. 
It will have been observed that the theory, as sketched above, 
assumes a detailed picture of the state of the “ Mystery Religions ” 
during the first generation of Christian history which is by no 
_ Means universally recognised as an accurate representation of the 
' facts.8 Most of our evidence for the character of these cults dates 

1 See J. G. Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris (Ota) i peasa.e 

2 Signs are, however, not wanting that the “ Mystery ”’ theory has reached 
the zenith of its popularity, and may shortly enter upon a period of decline, 
even in Germany ; see an article by Robert Eisler, ‘‘ Das letzte Abendmahl,”’ 
in Zeitschr. f. N.T. Wissensch., Nov. 1925, in which the author explains that 
he was once an adherent of the “‘ Mystery ”’ theory, but now considers it ‘‘ one 
of the most erroneous conclusions that has ever arisen in the whole history of 
New Testament study.” 

* A striking instance of the precariousness of the evidence for the “ Mystery ”” 
theory is provided by the ‘“‘ Hermetic ” writings. R. Reitzenstein, perhaps the 
best-known Continental student of the subject, regards them as “‘ scriptures ”” 
venerated by “‘ Hermetic congregations,”’ so that he is able to use them, in con- 
junction with magical papyri which mention the name of Hermes, for the 


purpose of reconstructing a scheme of ideas supposed to have been common to all 
Mystery Religions in the first century A.D., and to have included the conceptions 


Critique of the ““ Mystery” Hypothesis 393 


from the second and third centuries a.p., and there is no proof 
that we are entitled to employ it as evidence for the first century. 
The use of Mithraism in this connection is peculiarly unjustifiable, 
inasmuch as during St. Paul’s lifetime it was all but unknown in 
Europe, and never took root in lands of Greek speech and culture.+ 
It has not been proved that all the apparent analogues of Baptism 
and the Eucharist to be found in paganism were conceived as 
sacramental, nor yet that all mystery-cults possessed all of the three 
cardinal points of the generalised ‘‘ mystery-scheme ” presupposed 
by the theory, that is (1) a Kyrios, (2) a ceremonial washing, and 
(3) a sacred meal, But an attempt to reconstruct the stages of 
development to which the various Mystery Religions had severally 
attained during the period a.p. 29-70 would require far more 
space than is at our disposal. In spite, therefore, of the uncer- 
tainties just indicated, we will, for the sake of argument, assume 
that the advocates of the “‘ Mystery” hypothesis have construed 
the available evidence correctly, and that their picture of the 
Mystery Religions in the first century a.D. is free from anachronisms. 
We can afford to concede them this considerable logical advantage, 
because, if the strongest form of the “‘ Mystery” theory can be 
overthrown, it will carry with it in its fall any weaker forms 
which a searching historical analysis might reveal. 

Our criticisms of the ‘‘ Mystery” hypothesis will, therefore, 
not be concerned with details ; they will refer solely to its funda- 
mental positions, which may be formulated as follows : 


(2) That there is no reliable evidence that Christ did institute | 
the sacraments. 

(b) That His “‘ eschatologically limited outlook” proves that _ 
He could not have instituted them. 

(c) That the parallelism between Pauline and pagan sacra- 
mentalism is only explicable on the supposition that the 
former is directly derived from the latter. 


of the “‘ Spirit,” ‘‘ new birth,” and the efficacy of the Redeemer’s Name. (See 
especially Poimandres, 1904, pp. 1-36, 219, 226 ff., 366, 368 ; Die Hellenistischen 
Mysterienreligionen, 1910, pp. 33 ff., 112 ff.) The latest editor of these documents, 
on the other hand, Mr. Walter Scott (Hermetica, vols. i, ii., 1925), dismisses the 
idea of a Hermetic “cult”? and “ congregations”’ as a pure invention, and 
pronounces the Corpus Hermeticum to be no more than a fortuitous collection of 
late Greek-Egyptian philosophical and religious writings, only bound together 
by the fact that their authors happened to use the figures of Hermes and Tat as 
conventional dramatts personae. 
1 F, Cumont, Les mystéres de Mithra (1913), p- 31 f. 


394 The Origins of the Sacraments 


It will be convenient to consider these points in an order 
somewhat different from that in which we have stated them. 


1. “S Parallelism”? and “ derivation ’>—the question 0, 


a prior! probability 


The contamination of a higher religion by surviving elements 
of a lower which it has conquered or is in process of conquering 
is a phenomenon familiar to the student of the history of religions : 
the fusion of Yahwism with Canaanitish ba‘a/-worship denounced 
by the Hebrew prophets, and the transformation of Buddhism 
into Lamaism, are instances in point. No one who is intimately 
acquainted with Catholicism as it exists to-day in Mediterranean 
countries and amongst peoples of Iberian stock can deny that it 
contains many details of external observance and of popular piety 
which are directly borrowed from Graeco-Roman paganism ; 
a comparison of the model legs, arms, and hands suspended as 
ex-votos before continental shrines of our Lady with the precisely 
similar objects employed for the same purpose in temples of Isis 
will bring this fact vividly before the reader’s eyes. Graecia capta 
ferum victorem cepitt—the well-known Horatian line applies 
as much to the struggle of her folk-religion with the victorious 
faith of Judaea as to the contest of her culture with the barbarian 
rusticity of Rome. From the same source are descended the 
stories of holy wells and trees, winking pictures, sweating statues, 
flying houses, and other fetichistic and animistic beliefs which 
flourish rankly in the underworld of the Mediterranean religious 
consciousness. It was, perhaps, hardly to be expected that the 
ark of the Church could traverse the Sargasso Sea of the ancient 
religions without acquiring some adventitious incrustations of this 
kind ; and it is not necessary here to distinguish between those 
which are harmless or even picturesque, and those which defi- 
nitely retard the speed of the ship. And it may be observed, in 
parenthesis, that whatever less desirable effects the Reformation 
may have had, it conferred at least one permanent benefit upon 
religion in Northern countries by decisively plucking up the roots 
of all such heathen survivals, so as to make possible, at any rate 
in England, a fresh start, and the working out of a presentation 
of Catholicism which should contain no vital element of which 


I HoreBpr lls its. 


Critique of the ‘‘ Mystery” Hypothesis 395 


at least the germs were not to be found in the New ‘Testament. 
But these toys of the uneducated, ‘‘ miraculous”? stocks and 
stones, ex-votos, and the like, stand on an entirely different footing 
from the sacraments, which are the subject-matter of our inquiry : 
partly because such things as thaumaturgical images are in principle 
no more than separable accidents of any version of Catholicism, 
and could be relegated en masse to the dust-heap without any 
disturbance of its logical structure, and partly because the begin- 
nings of their infiltration into Christianity can be historically 
controlled and linked with the vast influx of semi-converted 
heathen into the Church during the fourth and succeeding 
centuries ; whereas the sacraments, In substantially their Catholic 
shape, and the conception of Jesus as Kyrios which they pre- 
suppose, appear in the pages of the New Testament itself. “The 
fact that direct, if unconscious, borrowing can be proved in the 
later and less important case of parallelism between Christian and 
pagan custom does not in itself compel us to assume a similar 
explanation of the earlier and more important.? 

Considered in itself, the statement that parallelism proves 
dependence would seem to be entirely arbitrary. As applied to 
the relations between Christian and ethnic sacramentalism, it 1s 
by no means new : it was asserted as strongly by the early Christian 
Apologists as by the modern non-Catholic critics, the only dif- 
ference between these two bodies of writers being that, whereas 
the critics assume the Christian sacraments to be the reflection of 
the pagan Mysteries, the Apologists held that the Mysteries were 
Satanic parodies of the sacraments. But both alike appear to have 
overlooked a third prima facie possibility, which would surely 
occur to a cultivated Martian or other completely unbiassed 
investigator, namely, that the connection between the Christian 
and the pagan rites might be collateral (in the sense that both 
might be independent products of the same psychological factors) 
and not one of direct dependence or causality. “The researches 

1 The same consideration applies to the facts (1) that in the fourth and 
succeeding centuries much “ mystery ” terminology was applied to the sacra- 
ments—cf. the title of St. Cyril of Jerusalem’s instructions on the sacraments, | 
Catecheses Mystagogicae—and (2) that certain details of liturgical observance 
(e.g. the use of milk and honey in connection with Christian initiation—see 
H. Usener, Rhein. Mus. fir Philol. \vii. 1777) seem to have been borrowed from 
or at least influenced by the procedure of the pagan mysteries. We are here 


only concerned with the fundamental essence of Christian sacramentalism as 
it appears in the New Testament. 


396 The Origins of the Sacraments 


of anthropologists seem to show that man everywhere tends to 
satisfy the same instincts in the same way : the works of Frazer, 
“Crawley, van Gennep, Durkheim, Hubert and Mauss, contain 
thousands of instances of similar myths, rites, customs, and tabus 
which have sprung up, to all appearance independently, in diverse 
lands in response to the same social or individual needs, and there is 
no necessity to postulate a “monophyletic” origin even for so 
elaborate a system as totemism. In no other department of 
scientific thought is it assumed as axiomatic that similar phenomena 
must be directly related as cause and effect ; and there seems no 
reason for making such an assumption within the sphere of the 
history of religions.1_ From the most severely impartial point of 
view, therefore, it must be at least an a priori possibility that the 
Christian lustration and sacred meal came to be interpreted in the 
same way as their pagan analogues, simply because it was found 
by experience that they did (for whatever reason) provide a full 
satisfaction for the same spiritual needs, that is, for those cravings 
for purity and ghostly strength, which in the pagan world had 
created the Mystery Religions as a means to their own partial 
gratification or sublimation. 

But a detached Christian investigator—by which phrase I 
mean an inquirer who had come to admit, in a general sense, 
the uniqueness and supremacy of the Christian revelation, without 
having decided which of the existing forms of our religion appeared 
to be the truest—would, I submit, be prepared somewhat to 
enlarge the field of this possibility. He would at least concede 
that Almighty God, in accordance with the principle of continuity 
which can be discerned running through His providential govern- 
ance of history, may have willed to do for man, through His final 
self-revelation, what man had attempted to do for himself through 
crude and imperfect means of his own devising; and _ that 
Christianity, as it claims in other respects to sum up and gather © 
into one the various lines of man’s secular search for God, may 
also claim—with pride, and not with apology—to be by divine 
appointment the supreme and ideal Mystery Religion. He 
would see no reason why the “‘ creed of creeds ” should not include, 


+ We do not forget that some anthropologists, like the late Dr. W. H. R. 
Rivers, do explicitly assume that all similarities of custom, religious and social, 
in different nations must be due to the spread of civilisation from a single centre ; 
but they are far from having converted all their fellow-students to this view. 


Critique of the “* Mystery”? Hypothesis 397 


side by side with an ethic loftier than that of Socrates, and a 
theology richer and grander than that of Aristotle, ‘‘ Mysteries ”’ 
more pure and ennobling than those of which Sophocles wrote : 


©S TOLGOABLOL 

xetvot Bootay, ot tata SepyOévtes TéEAy 

udrawa &¢ “Atsov.! 
And, assuming him to believe both in human free will and in 
God’s all-pervasive providence, he would admit that the Mystery 
Religions may have been an integral element in the vast praeparatio 
evangelica which began with the emergence of man from the ape 3 
that, viewed from the standpoint of human initiative, they may | 
have been models and symbols, first fashioned by man for himself, 
which God, condescending to man’s limitations, vouchsafed to 
reproduce within the framework of the final religion ; and that, 
viewed from the standpoint of divine providence, they may have 
been, like the Levitical ordinances, types and foreshadowings of 
* good things to come.” 

The supposed axiom that “ parallelism implies dependence ”’ 
is, therefore, neither self-evident nor inductively proven, and cannot 
be used to invest the hypothesis of “ pagan infiltration”? with a 
degree of a priori likelihood superior to that of ‘ Dominical insti- 
tution.” So far as our argument has gone, both hypotheses would 
seem to stand on the same level of probability. We may now carry 
our analysis a little deeper, with the object of showing that the 
“Mystery theory,” so far from being more probable than the 
traditional view, is actually less so, inasmuch as it involves a gross 
psychological impossibility. To make this point clear, let me 
remind the reader of the part which, according to this theory, was 
played by St. Paul in the genesis of Catholic sacramentalism. As 
Augustus found Rome brick and left it marble, so St. Paul is said 
to have found Christianity a vague movement of apocalyptic 
enthusiasm and to have left it a sacramental Kyrios-cult, a more or 
less organised Mystery Religion—not as the result of any deliberate 
action on his part, but through his too complaisant acquiescence in 
the tendency of his converts to construe the Gospel in terms of the 
Mysteries with which they were familiar. Now we have seen 
that, on the admission of the most typical champions of the Mystery 


1 ‘‘ How thrice-blest among mortals are they, who having beheld these 
rites go to the house of Hades’ (Soph. Fr. 719, ed. Dindorf). 


398 The Origins of the Sacraments 


theory, the Catholic ideas regarding Initiation and the Lord’s Supper 
are already present in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, a docu- 
ment which can hardly be dated later than a.p. 55. But the first 
conversions of pure Gentiles, that is of persons who were neither 
Samaritans nor Jewish proselytes—and the theory requires a large 
influx of pure Gentiles to account for the first beginnings of 
the “infiltration ’-process—cannot have happened earlier than 
A.D. 30-35, between which dates practically all systems of New 
‘Testament chronology would place the persecution which arose 
upon the death of Stephen, scattering the members of the primi- 
tive Jerusalemite community through Palestine and Syria, and 
thereby bringing to pass the momentous circumstance that certain 
“men of Cyprus and Cyrene” “spake unto the Greeks also the 
preaching of the Lord Jesus.””1 The radical transformation of 
the whole idea of Christianity which the Mystery theory assumes 
must, therefore, have taken not more, and probably rather less, 
than twenty years for 1ts accomplishment. 

Consider for a moment the implications of this supposition. 
It compels us to suppose that, within a comparatively short space 
of time, St. Paul’s Asian and Hellenic converts unconsciously 
infected their master and father in Christ with what was, on the 
hypothesis which we are considering, a profoundly un-Christian 
point of view; and that this mental infection was so thorough- 
going that the Apostle, whilst still at the zenith of his intellectual 
and spiritual powers, and still enjoying an unimpaired memory of 
his past life, came to believe—in diametrical opposition to the 
truth—that he had “received from the Lord,” through the Mother 
Church of Jerusalem,? and had always taught to his disciples, 
traditions and ideas which in fact he had unwittingly imbibed 
from them. It necessitates the ascription to him of an incredible 
degree either of simplicity or of carelessness, in order to account 
for the alleged fact that—whilst engaged in a campaign against 
those pagan cults which, in his bitterest moments, he regards, 
like Justin Martyr, as the work of daemons,? and which, in a 
more tolerant mood, he dismisses contemptuously as the worships 
of “many (so-called) Kyrio:”? #—he should have unsuspectingly 

+ Actaixinzo, 


* TI here assume the accepted interpretation of éy@ . . . mapékaBov &md 
tov xvetou in x Cor. xi. 23 3 see below, p. 400. 

® Compare 1 Cor. x. 20 f. and Justin, 1 Apol. 66. 

ANT USOL LV illoets 


————— eT ae 


Critique of the “* Mystery” Hypothesis 399 


allowed the texture of his devotion and his thought to become 
saturated by conceptions borrowed from those very “‘ Mysteries” 
which it was the object of his mission to destroy. If this be 
incredible, and yet the “ Mystery”? hypothesis be retained, it can 
only be on the supposition that St. Paul was dominated by the 
desire to attract converts at any price, even the price of truth. 
Only if one or other of these suppositions be accepted—only if 
we assume that the most heroic of evangelists may pervert his 
message for the sake of a cheap success, or that the most vigorous 
of thinkers may so befog himself by self-hypnosis as to lose grip 
on the realities of his own past life—shall we think it a prob- 
able explanation of the genesis of Catholic sacramentalism that 


“St. Paul, though ready to fight to the death against the Judaising © 
of Christianity, was willing to take the first step, and a long one, * 


towards the Paganising of it.” 

And only if we attribute a hardly believable blindness to the 
primitive nucleus of Jewish-Christians, can we suppose—as the 
“Mystery” theory would compel us to suppose—that, whilst 
attacking St. Paul with unmeasured ferocity for his liberalism in 
regard to the imposition of the Law upon Gentile converts, the 
Judaising faction should nevertheless have acquiesced, with 
inexplicable placidity, in his far-reaching contamination of the 
faith of Israel with Gentile ideas of a Kyrzos and of “ sacraments.” 4 


2. The evidence for “ Dominical Institution” re-examined : 


(a) The Eucharist 


If the foregoing conclusions as to the a priori probability of 
the traditional and the “ Mystery’ hypotheses are cogent—and 
I cannot see any way of escape from them—we may now proceed 
to a re-examination of the a posteriori evidence for the “‘ Dominical 
institution,” with the general disposition to trust such evidence, 
if it can be found. It will be convenient to discuss in the first 
instance the evidence for Christ’s institution of the Eucharist 
as a permanent rite. We may concede at once that the main 
weight of this hypothesis must rest upon the command which He 
is believed to have given, ‘‘’Uhis do in remembrance of me,”’ and 

1 If the Judaisers had raised any serious protests against St. Paul’s Christ- 


ology and sacramentalism, some traces of the fact would surely be found in 
the Acts and Epistles. 


4.00 The Origins of the Sacraments 


that, in the present uncertainty as to the genuine text of Luke xxii. 
17-20," the words of St. Paul in 1 Cor. xi. 24, 25 constitute 
our sole authority for this command. But, given the conclusions 
of our last paragraph—and leaving out of account for the moment 
the “ Mystery” critic’s trump card, namely, his contention as to 
the impossibility of our Lord’s having made any provision for 
the future, owing to His “ eschatologically limited outlook ”— 
it is reasonable to suggest that St. Paul’s authority is prima facie 
good enough. ‘The Apostle’s affirmation is so solemn and signi- 
ficant that it may be quoted at length : 

“ For I received of the Lord that which I also delivered unto 
you, how that the Lord Jesus, in the night in which he was 
betrayed, took bread ; and when he had given thanks, he broke 
it, and said, This is my body, which is for you: this do in re- 
membrance of me. In like manner also the cup, after supper, 
saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood : this do, as 
oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.” 

The opening words of this passage, “I received of the Lord 
that which I also delivered unto you,” are almost identical with 
those which introduce the list of the resurrection appearances 
in ch. xv. 3 of the same Epistle, “‘I delivered unto you that which 
I also received,’ and presumably bear the same meaning, namely, 
that the teaching which St. Paul transmitted to the Church of 
Corinth he had himself received from the Mother Church of 
Jerusalem. Such, indeed, is the accepted interpretation of the 
phrase : Professor Percy Gardner’s suggestion,” that the Apostle 
thereby implies some vision or supernormal “ revelation” as the 
medium whereby he “ received”’ this information “‘of the onl: 
has won very little acceptance. St. Paul, then, asserts quite 
definitely and bluntly, not only that Christ instituted the Lord’s 
Supper as a permanent rite, but that he himself had been informed 
of the fact by the immediate disciples of Christ. There can be 
no reason why these latter should have wished to deceive their 


* See above, p. 382. This admission does not invalidate the phrase in our 
present Prayer of Consecration, “‘Who .. . did institute, and in his holy 
Gospel command us to continue . . .,” as some recent proposals for Prayer 
Book Revision seem rather pedantically to assume ; the words “in his holy 
Gospel ”’ need not mean “ in one of the four canonical Gospels,”’ but may more 
appropriately be taken as signifying ‘‘ in his general message of salvation to 
the world.” 

® The Religious Experience of St. Paul (TOI1), p. 210. 


Critique of the “ Mystery” Hypothesis 401 


great recruit and future colleague ; and we have already shown 
reasons for rejecting the supposition that St. Paul deluded himself 
into the belief that he had received the Eucharistic tradition from 
the original Apostles, in much the same way as George IV 
deluded himself into believing that he had been present at the 
Battle of Waterloo. The Pauline testimony, then, holds the 
field so far. It is not temerarious to add that, if it had been only 
the acts and intentions of Alexander the Great or of Julius Caesar 
that were in question, testimony from an analogous source would 
never have been challenged. 

The question may be very reasonably raised at this point : 
“Tf the words, ‘ This do in remembrance of me,’ are a genuine 
logion of the Lord, how is it that they are absent from the Synoptic 
Gospels, and presumably from the ultimate sources used by the 
Synoptists, that is, the Petrine tradition underlying Mark, and 
what is usually termed LQ, the early and reliable tradition from 
which Luke drew his Passion-narrative?”? This question 
deserves a careful reply, all the more so because an adequate 
treatment of it will involve coming to close grips with the ultimate 
contention on which the “ Mystery” theory rests and apart from 
which, as we have seen, it does not possess any measure of 
probability—the contention, namely, that Christ cou/d not have 
instituted any sacraments or made any provision for a future 
Church, inasmuch as He believed that this present world was on } 
the point of coming to an end. It will conduce to clearness if 
we formulate our answer first, and state the grounds on which 
we base it afterwards. 

Our answer is in substance as follows. ‘‘ The silence of the 
Synoptists, and possibly of the traditions which they employed, 
as to the command ‘ This do’ is amply accounted for—and any 
argument which might be founded on this silence, of a nature 
hostile to the hypothesis of ‘ Dominical institution,’ is cancelled— 
by the fact that both Mark (followed by Matthew) and Luke 
contain another, more enigmatically expressed /ogion, which, 
though difficult of comprehension at the time of its utterance, was 
later recognised as being fraught with the same meaning as * This 
do,’ namely, the expression of the Lord’s purpose that His actions 
should be repeated by His future Church. This /ogion is the 
verse, ‘ Verily I say unto you, I will no more drink of the 
[this, A7@¢.] fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new 

2D 


402 The Origins of the Sacraments 


[with you, 44¢.] in the kingdom of God’ (Mk. xiv. 25=Mt. 
xxvi. 29 1=Lk. xxii. 18, with apparently a doublet in v. 16). 
As the Synoptists record this saying, they might well have thought 
it unnecessary to record the command ‘ ‘This do,’ even if they had 
known of it.2. “There is, however, no reason why both sayings 
should not have been uttered by our Lord at the Last Supper, the 
Synoptic traditions preserving one and the Pauline tradition the 
other.?’ We must now proceed to justify the meaning which we 
have attributed to the Synoptic saying, “* Verily I say unto you, etc.” 

We can best develop our exegesis of this passage by sketching 
the interpretation of it which would be given by thoroughgoing 
upholders of the view opposed to our own. ‘The key to its 
meaning lies in the phrase “the Kingdom of God.” For our 
Lord’s contemporaries, the Kingdom of God meant a new world- 
order, conceived as a somewhat materialistic millennium, which 
would immediately succeed the Day of Jehovah with its accom- 
panying cataclysms, in which the present world-order would have 
been dissolved. In this Kingdom the sovereignty of God would 
be exercised by the Messiah, reigning over a rejuvenated earth, 
which would be possessed by the Saints, that is by pious Israelites, 
in boundless peace, wealth and happiness. We have already 
sketched the theory that these expectations were shared by our 
Lord, and that His mental horizon was limited, so far as the 
existing world-order was concerned, by the belief in the imminence 
of the End; from which it would follow that He can have had 
no idea of providing for the future of His group of disciples under 
the conditions of this present life by instituting sacraments. ‘This 
theory, however, provides what is (given its assumptions) a not 
unreasonable explanation of His action at the Last Supper and of 
the /ogion now under discussion. It was apparently a common 
device of the apocalyptists * to represent the bliss of the millennial 


1 We assume that the Marcan version of this saying is more likely to be 
original, as being more fresh and vivid in phraseology, than the Lucan. The 
question as to whether it was spoken before the sacred action (Lk.) or after it 
(Mk., Mt.) is irrelevant to the argument. 

2 The presumption is that St. Luke at least aid know of it, owing to his 
association with St. Paul. 

3 Cf. the two sayings said to have been addressed by our Lord to Judas at 
the moment of the betrayal—‘* Comrade, [do] that for which thou art here ”’ 
(Mt. xxvi. 50), and “‘ Judas, with a kiss dost thou deliver up the Son of man ?”’ 
(Lk. xxii. 48)—both of which may well be historical. 

4 Cf. t Enoch xav., lxii. 14; Test. Levi, xviii. 11. 


Critique of the “ Mystery” Hypothesis 403 


“Kingdom” under the figure of the “ Messianic banquet ”— 
an image ultimately derived from the words of Isaiah xxv. 6, 
‘In this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all peoples 
a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full 
of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined.” Now it has been 
noticed that the acts of blessing and breaking bread in a specially 
solemn manner are recorded as having been performed by our Lord 
on at least one other occasion during His earthly lifetime, in 
connection with the miraculous feeding of a great crowd (or on 
two other occasions, if the stories of the Five and Four Thousand 
be regarded as based on two separate incidents). Dr. A. Schweitzer 
has made the brilliant suggestion! that, in order to heighten the 
vividness of His teaching about the joys of the coming Kingdom, 
Jesus was accustomed from time to time to hold what may be 
described as a dramatic or symbolic rehearsal of the ‘ Messianic 
banquet,” distributing to each of those present a tiny portion of 
some common food, bread and fish, or bread and wine ; that the 
stories of the “ miraculous feedings”? represent accounts of such 
rehearsals, touched up (when their original significance had been 
forgotten) by the addition of the assertion that the participants had 
previously been fainting with hunger, but were supernaturally 
satisfied by the multiplication of the food; and that the actions 
performed by Him at the Last Supper were meant to be the last 
and most solemn of these ceremonial rehearsals, carried out within 
the privacy of His own circle of intimate friends, under the 
shadow of the impending Passion, by which He believed that He 
could force the hand of God and compel the Kingdom to appear. 
On this hypothesis, the meaning of the declaration “I will no 
more drink of the fruit of the vine” is clear. Roughly paraphrased 
it means ‘‘ This is the last of our ceremonial rehearsals of the 
* Messianic banquet,’ the last of our symbolic foreshadowings : 
the next meal at which we shall meet will be the reality, the 
* Messianic banquet’ itself, celebrated in the new world-order, in 
the unearthly Kingdom of God to be brought down from heaven 
by the suffering which lies before Me. Now I drink, and invite 
you to share, the old wine of this present world, which is ripe to 
rottenness and on the point of passing away ; but then we shall 
drink the new wine of the world to come.” 


Von Reimarus xu Wrede, E. T., The Quest of the Historical Fesus (1910); 
P- 374 ff. 


404 The Origins of the Sacraments 


/ It is impossible within the limits of this essay to examine the 
fs eschatological” theory of the life of Christ in detail ; but it is 
not too much to say that on the whole such writers as Johannes 
Weiss and Schweitzer seem to have established, as against the 
older ‘‘ Liberal Protestant’ view, their main contention, namely, 
the centrality of the conception of the future “ Kingdom” in 
our Lord’s message, and the relatively subordinate position of His 
ethical teaching, as being merely a “ propaedeutic”’ or preparatory 
discipline designed to qualify men for entrance into the Kingdom. 
‘The acceptance of this general position, however, does not by 
any means carry with it an acceptance of the more particular 
assumption which has coloured and determined these writers’ 
whole presentation of the life of Christ, that is, the assumption 
that our Lord meant by “the Kingdom of God” xo more than 
what His “fewish contemporaries meant by that phrase. ‘Vhis 
latter is the fundamental postulate which lies at the bottom of the 
hypothesis of His “ eschatologically limited outlook,” and, con- 
sequently, at the bottom of the whole “ Mystery”’ theory. But, 
I submit, it is a postulate which, though not susceptible of 
mathematical disproof, is contrary to the inherent rationality of 
things and renders the general course of human history unintelli- 
gible ; for it assumes that the greatest Man of all time possessed 
little or no originality in the intellectual sphere, that He was the 
slave and not the master of popular phraseology, and that He did 
not possess even so much power of foreseeing and providing for 
the future as is attributed by Mommsen to Julius Caesar.1 
It is not necessary to invoke the Christology of Nicaea and 
Chalcedon (which consistent advocates of the “‘ Mystery” theory 
naturally do not accept), or to dogmatise about the very difficult 
problem of the limitations of the knowledge exercised by our Lord 
as man, In order to rebut this assumption ; it is sufficient to appeal 
to the general probability that the supreme Messenger of God 
to the world (and we cannot, within the limits of this essay, argue 
with any one who denies the historical Jesus this position) was 
not a deluded fanatic, whose prophecies were conspicuously 
1 Mommsen (History of Rome, E. tr., 1894, V. xi.) credits Caesar with the 
conscious intention of bringing into existence that unified and homogeneous 
Italo-Hellenic empire which actually did realise itself under his successors ; 
why should not a greater than Caesar be credited with the conscious intention 


of creating that Church and faith which actually did spring from His life 
and death ? 


Critique of the “ Mystery” Hypothesis 405 


refuted by the facts, less than a generation after His death. ‘Those 
who accept this general probability will be prepared to believe 
that our Lord was perfectly capable of pouring a new and refined 
content into current popular phrases, and that His prediction (in 
its Marcan form) ““Uhere be some here of them that stand by, 
which shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the kingdom of 
God come with power ”’ ! was fulfilled in very truth at Pentecost, 
when the Kingdom of God came with power as the Catholic 
Church and faith, which went forth from the Upper Room, 
conquering and to conquer. On this hypothesis, the ‘‘ Kingdom,” 
which is both present and future, both an interior inspiration and 
an external power, both the product of gradual growth and a 
catastrophic irruption into the time-series from the eternal world, 
is nothing other than the new dispensation of faith and grace 
which actually did spring from Calvary; it is the ‘“‘new 
covenant ”’ consecrated by the blood of the Messiah, the new 
universal Ecclesia or Israel of God. With such an interpretation 
of the meaning of the ‘‘ Kingdom ” the facts of our Lord’s life 
and teaching, as re-grouped by the “ eschatological theory,” come 
into perfect line ; and a new and deeper significance is given to 
the conception of the “ Messianic banquet,’ as implied in the 
passages mentioned above. 

In the light of this interpretation we may well accept the 
suggestion that our Lord’s action at the Last Supper was not the 
first action of the kind. It is very probable that the feeding or 
feedings of great crowds, whether accompanied by miraculous 
circumstances or not, were meant in the first instance to be 
symbolic portrayals of the future banquet, which would gladden 
the hearts of the members of the Messianic Kingdom ; and that 
the same thought was present to our Lord’s mind when He spoke 
of the Gentiles as “reclining at meat” with the patriarchs, at 
the mystic feast that was to be. But, if the ““ Kingdom of God” 
is the Christian Church and faith, what else can the ‘* Messianic 
banquet”? be than the Eucharist, the sacrum convivium which is 
the centre of its life, and in which the Messiah Himself is believed 
to be both the Breaker of the bread and the Bread which is broken ? 


1 Mark ix. 1; the Matthaean version (xvi. 28) misunderstands the point 
of the saying, and turns it into a prediction of the end of the world and the 
Parousia of the Son of Man. 

2 Matt. viii. 1: = Luke xiii. 29. 


4.06 The Origins of the Sacraments 


If this is so, the Fourth Evangelist has, at the least, shown a 
true instinct, and may well be conforming to the historical course 
of events, when he appends his great Eucharistic discourse 
at Capernaum to the account of the ‘“ miraculous feeding.” 
Whatever the exact purport of the words “ This is my body” 
and “ "This is my blood”—and I should be trenching on the 
ground of another writer if I were to discuss this question in 
detail—it is clear that, on any showing, the communion ad- 
ministered by our Lord at the Last Supper must be regarded as 
having been sui generis and exceptional, because, at the moment 
when He pronounced these words, His body had not yet been 
broken, nor His blood shed; and we may, therefore, without 
irreverence, conclude that there must have been something, as it 
were of imperfection, or of a provisional nature, in a communion 
administered before the accomplishment of that which every 
Communion is meant to proclaim, namely, the Lord’s death.2 
If this is so, then the mysterious /ogion, from which this section 
of our discussion has started, may be interpreted as meaning : 
“This is the last of those prophetic actions, whereby I have 
endeavoured to impress upon you, through type and shadow, the 
glories of that future ‘ Messianic banquet,’ which will be shared 
by the elect in the * Kingdom of God.’ “The next imene 
we meet together on such an occasion as this, I shall still be the 
Host, though present invisibly, and not in tangible form. But 
the next celebration of this Feast will not be, as this Is, a pro-~ 
visional and anticipated transaction of the sacramental mystery 5 
it will be the mystery itself, consummated in the Kingdom of God, 
that is, in My Church, which in its universalised or Catholic 
form will be constituted by virtue of the great events which lie 
before us, My death and resurrection, and the coming of the 
Holy Ghost.” | 

Interpreted in this way, the saying is not indeed a command 
to continue the observance of the solemn “ drinking of the fruit 
of the vine”: but it is an affirmation that the observance would 
‘in point of fact be continued in the future Kingdom : and such an 
affirmation, made by one who believed Himself to be the King- 
designate, is the equivalent of a command, in so far as it is an 
explicit declaration of His purpose and intention. It may there- 
fore be concluded without extravagance that the Synoptic and the 

* See the Note appended to this essay, ‘“‘ On Mark xiv. 2 Sia 


Critique of the “‘ Mystery” Hypothesis 407 


Pauline traditions, taken together, constitute evidence for the 
“ Dominical institution’ of the Eucharist (that is, for the per- 
formance by Christ of certain actions with the intention that they 
should be repeated), such as would be considered reasonably 
adequate for any alleged event belonging to the secular history 
of the same period and country. 


’ 


3. The evidence for “ Dominical Institution” re-examined : 


(b) Initiation 


The question whether Christian Baptism can be said to 
have been “instituted” by Christ or not is in some ways a more 
difficult one. It is clear that in this connection the term cannot 
be taken as synonymous with “ devised’? or ‘‘invented”’ ; for 
the custom had already been practised by Christ’s forerunner, 
John. It will be used, therefore, during the following discussion 
in the sense of “adopted,” ‘‘ sanctioned,” or “enjoined.” At 
this point the earliest Christian documents which we possess, 
namely the extant letters of St. Paul, fail us; for though the 
Apostle of the Gentiles, as we shall see, attributes the highest 
value to the rite, he does not make any statement, in that part of 
his correspondence which has survived, as to its exact origin. 
The only direct statement on the subject contained in the New 
Testament is the famous verse, Matt. xxviii. 19, in which the 
risen Christ is represented, not merely as commanding the uni- 
versal administration of Baptism, but also as prescribing the 
Trinitarian formula for recitation in connection with the sacra- 
mental act. It is impossible, for the reasons mentioned above in 
Section III,! to deny the force of the suggestion that this passage 
may be a piece of compendious symbolic narrative, that is, of 
dogmatic theology cast into a quasi-historical form, rather than 
of history strictly so called ; and we are therefore debarred from 
using the Matthaean command, “‘Go ye therefore . . euasia 
means of settling the question without further discussion. 

On the other hand, there is a reasonable probability that even 
“Matthew,” with all his lack of the minute scrupulousness 
demanded by the modern scientific historian, would not in regard 
to a matter of such crucial importance have made so plain and 


1 p. 380 f. 


408 The Origins of the Sacraments 


direct an assertion without any sort of @ posteriori justification. 
Even though his statement as to the exact occasion on which, 
and the precise terms in which, the precept was given may not 
command the fullest confidence, it is possible to hold that it 
embodies a kernel of truth, and that, on some occasion not known 
to us, Christ did with His human lips actually enjoin the practice 
of the custom upon His disciples. In other words, whilst we 
cannot attribute overwhelming weight to St. Matthew’s testimony, 
it cannot be reasonably denied any weight at all. It is at least 
good evidence for the belief of the Christian Church some fifty 
years after the resurrection. The most logical view, therefore, 
of the function which it may play in our inquiry into the origins 
of Christian Baptism, will be to regard it as the feather which may 
decisively weigh down that scale of the historical balance which 
represents ““ Dominical institution,” if sufficient indirect evidence 
can be gathered from the rest of the New Testament to invest 
this hypothesis with considerable likelihood. This text, taken 
together with the words attributed to our Lord by St. John, 
about the new birth through water and the Spirit,! will be just 
enough to turn a high degree of probability into reasonable cer- 
tainty, assuming that such a probability can be established by 
other means. But if the weight of probability turns out to be in 
favour of the alternative hypothesis—namely, that which assumes 
that the disciples spontaneously copied the baptism of John, or 
the Jewish baptism of proselytes, without any explicit instructions 
from our Lord so to do—then the Matthaean text, not being more 
than a feather, will not avail to weigh down the opposite scale. 

We will, accordingly, leave the Matthaean evidence for the 
moment on one side, and examine the data furnished by the 
remainder of the New Testament, in the hope of finding some 
independent indications as to the origin of Christian Initiation. 
Such a review must necessarily start from the baptism of John 
and its Jewish antecedents, but need not go further back into 
history: the idea of symbolising purification from uncleanness 
by the act of washing in water is so obvious and natural, and has 
occurred independently to so many peoples,? that it is neither 
necessary nor indeed possible to determine its ultimate beginnings. 

* John iii. s. 

* For detailed information see Hastings, E.R.E., vol. ll., art. 


“* Baptism 
(Ethnic),”’ 


Critique of the “ Mystery” Hypothesis 409 


In the Levitical law, ablutions with water are prescribed as a 
means of removing ceremonial pollution contracted by the touch 
of a corpse, or in other ways.1 “These precepts doubtless represent 
the survival of a primitive stage of religious thought, in which 
evil is conceived quasi-materialistically as “‘ bad mana.” From 
these Levitical lustrations were derived both the baptism of the 
Essenes,2 and that by which proselytes after circumcision were 
made full members of the Jewish Church.® In the latter instance 
the idea was rather that of cleansing the Gentile from the cere- 
monial defilement with which he was assumed to be infected 
through a life spent in idolatry, than that of abolishing “‘ original 
sin,” in anything like the Augustinian sense of the term. John the 
Baptist adopted the custom, but gave it a distinctly ethical and 
spiritual, as contrasted with its previous quasi-material, significance. 
This is shown by the fact that John’s baptism is described as a 
‘baptism of repentance,” * and that it was preceded by, or at any 
rate closely associated with, a confession of sins.6 Here we 
discern for the first time two of the essential elements of the great 
Christian rite of Initiation, namely (a) Confession, and (4) 
Baptism. ‘The purpose of John’s baptism is said to have been 
the ‘‘ forgiveness of sins,” § and we need not doubt that he and 
his disciples believed that this was really effected by the act ; 
the distinction between a declaratory symbol and an efficacious 
sacrament is too subtle to be grasped by unreflective enthusiasts 
such as were those who thronged to hear the Baptist’s preaching, 
and is, in any case, alien to ancient modes of thought. “This 
“ remission of sins,” it would seem, had an eschatological orienta- 
tion and purpose. “Those who received it believed that they had 
been thereby invested with an invisible spiritual ‘‘ character,” 
which would be their passport through the terrors of the End, 
and would ensure their entrance into the calm haven of the 
Messianic millennium. We are not told that any verbal formula 
was associated with John’s baptism. Despite his eclipse by his 
mightier Successor, and his early death, his movement seems to 
have possessed sufficient vitality to persist in the form of a 
“Johannite” sect, which survived as a kind of parasite on 

1 Cf. Lev. xv. passim, xvii. 15, 16 5 Num. sabe 

2 Jos. B.F., II. vill. 7. 

8 Yewish Encyclopaedia, arts. Baptism ” and “ Proselyte.” 

4 Luke iii. 3; Acts xix. 4. 5 Matt. iii. 6 = Mark i. 5. 

6 Luke iii. 3. 


410 The Origins of the Sacraments 


Christianity, administering the “* baptism of John,” at least down 
to A.D. 55. It will be remembered that one of its most illustrious 
members was Apollos, who was eventually led by Aquila and 
Priscilla into the larger life of the Christian Church. 

It is in contrast with this baptism of John that we perceive 
most clearly the differentia of Christian Baptism, or baptism “ into 
the name of the Lord Jesus.” We are told that at Ephesus 
St. Paul found certain members of the Johannite sect, who are 
given the title of “disciples,” 2 and must therefore be presumed 
to have been indistinguishable in most respects from full Christians, 
but who appear to have manifested none of those supernormal 
phenomena generally attributed to the action of the “Spirit,” 
and who upon examination confessed that they had not even 
heard of His existence. ~ St. Paul thereupon rebaptizes them “ in 
the name of the Lord Jesus” ; and we are told that when this 
rebaptism had been completed by the imposition of the Apostle’s 
hands, the Holy Spirit came upon them, with the result that they 
at once manifested the characteristic signs of His presence, namely, 
“ glossolaly ”? and prophecy. ‘This incident is instructive. It 
shows, first of all, that the baptism of John and Christian Baptism 
at this date were regarded as entirely different things, not as 
imperfect and perfect forms of the same thing. Secondly, we 
gather that, on the external side, the differentia of Christian 
Baptism is found in the employment of the “ name of Jesus” as 
part of a spoken formula ; and, thirdly, that on the spiritual side 
its characteristic effect is, not merely the ‘remission of sins,” 
which the Johannine baptism also claimed to bestow, but the 
impartation of “holy spirit.” We need not here investigate the 
psychological rationale of the extraordinary phenomena which 
the early Christians attributed to “ holy spirit,” or the validity of 
the conception itself. We are only concerned to draw attention 
to the fact that, whereas Johannine initiation consisted only of 
(a) repentance, and (4) baptism effecting only the “ remission of 
sins,” Christian Initiation consisted of (a) repentance, (4) baptism, 
and (c) laying on of hands, which produced both the ‘ remission 
of sins” and also possession of the Holy Spirit. 

This ascription to Christian Initiation of a double effect, 
negative and positive, sin-annulling and Spirit-bestowing, appears 


1 Acts xviii. 26. 2 Acts xix. 1. 
3 Acts xix. 1—7. 


Critique of the “ Mystery” Hypothesis 411 


to run back into the very earliest days of the infant Church. On 
the Day of Pentecost St. Peter instructs his Jewish hearers as 
follows: ‘ Repent ye, and be baptized every one of you in the 
name of fesus Christ, unto the remission of your sins ; and ye shall 
receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.”+ In other words, whereas 
the Johannine practice was a water-baptism only, the Christian 
rite was both a water-baptism and a Spirit-baptism. At first, it 
would seem, the illapse of the Spirit was mediated by the baptism 
alone.2. Later, when the Apostles began to be confronted by 
baptisms which did not at once produce the supernormal 
charismata which testified to the Spirit’s presence, it was found, 
as at Samaria,3 that the imposition of the Apostles’ hands was 
accompanied by the bestowal of what was lacking in the way of 
spiritual gifts ; and thus, apparently, the impartation of the Spirit 
became specifically associated with the “laying on of hands ”’ as 
a distinct, though not as yet a separate, part of the rite. In this 
way what we now call “ Confirmation” came into existence as 
embodying the positive effects of Initiation, the negative effects 
being specifically associated with the actual washing ; and in the 
Epistle to the Hebrews we find the * doctrine of baptisms ”’ and 
of “the laying on of hands” bracketed together as part of the 
“foundation,” in which it is assumed that adult Christians do 
not need instruction.4 ‘The complete continuity between this 
Apostolic practice and the combined rite of Penance, Baptism, 
and Confirmation, as we find it in the early patristic period,® does 
not need to be emphasised. 

It is clear from the language of the New Testament that the 
subjects of this initiatory rite were normally adults, who alone 
were capable of the repentance and confession which formed its 
initial stage ; though it would be rash to assert that children were 
never baptized, and the well-known saying of Polycarp, “ eighty 
and six years have I served Christ,’ ® seems to show that at least 
one instance of infant baptism must have taken place before the 
fall of Jerusalem in a.p. 70. Consonantly with this fact, it 
appears that “the sins”? which are conceived as being washed 

1 Acts ii. 38. 
2 Exceptionally, as in the case of Cornelius and his household, the illapse 
of the Spirit might actually precede the baptism (Acts x. 44 ff.). 

8 Acts vill. 14. Si Hebivi, 2; 


6 £.g. Tertullian, De Baptismo, 7, 8, 20. 
6 Martyrium Polycarpt, 9. 


412 The Origins of the Sacraments 


away by Baptism are what we should call actual sins.1 Yet, in 
the exuberant enthusiasm of the Church’s youth, it was natural 
to assume that interior conversion of the soul and exterior 
initiation into the Christian society were, not merely in theory 
but in fact, different aspects of the same process, like the concave 
and convex aspects of a curve. At first, Baptism seemed to have 
the effect of transforming its recipient into a “new creation,” 2 
so effectually that all his sinful impulses and appetites were 
destroyed, and sin became both a moral and a psychological 
impossibility for him. We need not now review the steps of the 
process whereby it was found, through bitter experience, that 
this ultra-optimistic estimate of the transforming effects of Initia- 
tion was exaggerated, and whereby, in the teeth of embittered 
opposition, ‘‘ Penitence”? was detached from its place at the 
beginning of the initiatory rite, and shaped into a subsidiary 
sacrament for the purpose of imparting a second remission of sins 
to post-baptismal offenders. We are only concerned with the 
ideas which prevailed on these subjects during the lifetime of 
St. Paul ; and it is sufficient to refer the reader for an extensive 
treatment of the effects of Christian Initiation to cc. v—viii. of 
the Epistle to the Romans, in which the Apostle elaborates the 
primitive ideas of the “remission of sins” and the bestowal of 
“Holy Spirit”? into a magnificent sequence of pictorial con- 
ceptions, representing the effects of “ faith? and Baptism, that 
is of the whole change from non-Christianity to Christianity, 
under the figures of incorporation into the Messiah,? the cruci- 
fixion of the “‘old man,” 4 the ‘“‘annihilation of the body of sin,”’ 5 
a mystical participation in the death, burial and resurrection 
of the Redeemer-God, and the reception of the “Spirit of 
adoption,” ° which entitles the neophytes to repeat the words of 
the Lord’s own prayer, “* 4bba, F ather,” ? and which will one 
day transform them into the “splendour of the freedom of the 
children of God.” ® A more prosaic, but no less characteristic, 


1 It is impossible here to examine the rationale of Paedo-baptism and its 
connection with the doctrine of “‘ original sin ” ; a full discussion of the matter 
will be found in my forthcoming Bampton Lectures, The Ideas of the Fall and 
of Original Sin. 

#2: Cory ye 37; ® Rom. vi. 3; cf. Gal. iii. 27. 

4 Rom. vi. 6. SayiE6; Siuiliiires 

? viii. 15: for the interpretation of ‘‘ Abba, Father ” as the opening words 
of the Lord’s Prayer, see Th. Zahn, Rémerbrief (1910), p. 395. 

* vil. 18° ff. 


Critique of the “ Mystery” Hypothesis 413 


summary of the various elements in Christian Initiation, both 
inner and outer, is found in 1 Cor. vi. 11, in which passage the 
Apostle, after having detailed various abominable types of human 
sin, adds, with considerable frankness—‘‘ And such were some 
of you [in your pre-Christian lives]; but ye were washed, but 
ye were sanctified, but ye were justified [i.e. absolved] in the name 
of the Lord Fesus Messiah and in the Sprrit of our God.” 

It has been said above that this Pauline conception is clearly 
continuous, indeed identical, with the doctrine of the earliest 
Christian writers outside the New Testament, that is, for all 
practical purposes, with the Catholic doctrine. Can it show a 
similar continuity with the ideas held in regard to Baptism during 
the earliest days of Christianity? Prima facte the continuity 
between St. Peter’s teaching as reported in Acts il. 38 and 
St. Paul’s teaching as expressed in the passages just mentioned 
appears to be without a break ; the threefold scheme, Penitence, 
Baptism with water in the Name of the Lord Jesus, Reception 
of ‘‘ Holy Spirit,” runs all through the New Testament allusions 
to the subject. We have already adduced considerations to show 
that St. Paul was not likely to have “ paganised,” or to have 
acquiesced in the “‘ paganisation ” by his converts of, an originally 
non-sacramental custom ; and these considerations apply just as 
much to Initiationas to the Eucharist. It is true that his theology 
of Initiation represents in one respect an advance upon the primi- 
tive ideas embodied in the early chapters of the Acts, in so far as 
the spiritual effect of Baptism is said to include not merely the 
impartation of “Holy Spirit” but a transcendental or mystical 
union with Jesus, the Kyrios: this, however, is not so much an 
addition to the primitive teaching as a clarification of it, which 
necessarily followed from the ever-growing realisation of the 
personal distinction between “ the Lord” and ‘‘ the Spirit.” The 
suggestion that the Pauline or deutero-Pauline phrase “ having 
cleansed it” (the Church) ‘‘ by washing of water with a word” 4 
implies a magical conception of Baptism (the ‘“‘ word ” being the 
Name of Jesus used as a spell) and therefore the beginnings of 
“pagan infiltration,” seems purely arbitrary. 

Weare, then, entitled to conclude, on the basis of this survey 
of the relevant New Testament passages, that one single con- 
ception of “ Initiation” runs through the thought and the 

1 Eph. v. 26. 


AI4 The Origins of the Sacraments 


surviving literature of the Christian Church between the Day of 
Pentecost (? A.D. 29 or 30) and the destruction of Jerusalem 
(A.D. 70). This Christian Initiation, with its ¢hree members, 
Penitence, Washing, Reception of “ Spirit,” is clearly based upon 
the Baptist’s initiation, which included two members only, 
Penitence and Washing. In fact, the Christian rite may be 
described as being identical with John’s baptism, save for the 
addition of two all-important features, one external and the other 
internal, namely, the use of a formula containing the name of 
Jesus,* and the consequent or concomitant impartation of “ Holy 
Spirit’ to the baptized person. By what authority or by whose 
will were these additions made? ‘Three considerations may be 
adduced, the cumulative effect of which (I would suggest) is to 
establish a very great probability that the historic cause which 
transformed the baptism of John into Christian Baptism was the 
expressed will of Christ Himself. 

(1) The language of 1 Cor. x. 1-4, with its reference to the 
Old ‘Testament types of the two great sacraments, shows that 
St. Paul bracketed together Baptism and the Eucharist, very much 
as a modern Christian might, as rites of equal or all but equal 
dignity and awe. (‘Our fathers . . . were all baptized unto 
Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and did all eat the same spiritual 
meat, and did all drink the same spiritual drink.” 2) But there 
cannot be any doubt that he bases the whole wonder and mystery 
of the Eucharist on the fact of its Dominical institution, and it is 
extremely unlikely that he would have coupled with it, as a rite 
on the same level, a mere Church-custom which could not 
claim a similar august origin. It is, further, inconceivable that 
he can have based his exalted conception of Baptism on nothing 
at all, or that he naively took this rite for granted without raising 


1 The early and universal substitution of the Name of the Father, Son, 
and Holy Ghost for the ‘“‘ Name of the Lord Jesus”? was presumably due to 
the influence of Matt. xxviii. 19. In view of the eighteen centuries of pre- 
scription which the use of the Three-fold Name can now claim, the modern 
Church is doubtless justified in making its employment an absolute condition 
of the technical ‘‘ validity’ of the rite as administered at the present day ; 
but the Roman Catholic scholar, W. Koch (Die Taufe im N.T., 1921, p. 7) 
quotes Pope Nicholas I (Respons. ad consult. Bulgar., ap. Denzinger-Bannwart, 
Enchetridion Symb. et Def., 33 5). Cajetan, and Hadrian of Utrecht (later Pope 
Hadrian VI) as asserting the standing validity of baptism ‘‘in the name of 
Jesus ” or “* of Christ.” 

* See Kirsopp Lake, Earlier Epistles of St. Paul, Pp £78,214, 


Critique of the “‘ Mystery” Hypothesis 415 


the question of its provenance. It is equally improbable that, 
like Tertullian,! he connected the saving effects of Baptism with 
the intrinsic properties of water, or that he relied on the authority 
of John the Baptist, whose baptism he expressly declares at 
Ephesus to have been imperfect and provisional. And it would 
be anachronistic in the extreme to suppose that his theology of 
Baptism, as a mystical identification with the deathand resurrection 
of the Messiah, was founded merely on an ‘induction’? from 
the “observed effects”? of a custom which owed its origin and 
universal diffusion to mere chance. ‘The earliest Christians were 
not self-conscious enough to analyse their “ experience” in the 
manner of the modern introspective psychologist, or to base 
scientific “inductions” upon it. ‘The fact that St. Paul’s extant 
correspondence does not contain any explicit attribution of the 
institution of Baptism to Christ does not prove that other letters 
of his now lost may not have contained such an attribution ; and 
an argument a silentio hostile to “ Dominical institution ”’ cannot 
legitimately be based upon this fact.’ We are therefore entitled 
to claim, on the ground of the great solemnity with which St. Paul 
speaks of Baptism, implicitly co-ordinating it in respect of majesty 
and efficaciousness with the Lord’s Supper, a very high degree 
of probability for the supposition that he believed its celebration 
to be founded on the declared will of Christ. And if such was 
St. Paul’s conviction, it must also have been the current teaching 
of the Mother Church of Jerusalem. He can hardly have 
claimed for his teaching with regard to Baptism any other 
authority than that on which he bases his Eucharistic doctrine— 
“T received of the Lord” (through the mediation of those who 
had known Him in the flesh) ‘‘ that which also I delivered unto 
ol eg 
(2) The narrative of the Day of Pentecost contained in 


1 De Baptismo, 3-5. 

2 The much-quoted sentence, 1 Cor. i. 17, ‘‘ Christ sent me not to baptize, 
but to preach the gospel,” if interpreted in the light of its context, merely 
means that St. Paul’s characteristic function, as Apostle of the Gentiles, was 
preaching, rather than (what we should call) liturgical ministration 5; he usually 
employed others to baptize for him, in order to avoid the possibility of his 
converts developing an excessive attachment to his own person. Under cir- 
cumstances similar to those which prevailed at Corinth, these words would 
have risen quite naturally to the lips of many Catholic mission preachers, from 
Savonarola down to Father Dolling ; and it seems purely arbitrary to construe 
them as a disparagement of Baptism or a denial of its Dominical institution. 


416 The Origins of the Sacraments 


Acts il. represents St. Peter as stating, without a moment’s hesi- 
tation or reflection, the fully developed theory of Christian 
Initiation in its three elements, Penitence, Baptism, and the 
reception of Holy Spirit.t If this narrative can be taken as 
historically exact, Dominical institution is proved, because there 
had been obviously no time in which St. Peter could have con- 
sidered the results of Christian Baptism and formed an inductive 
conclusion to the effect that it really did impart the Holy Spirit. 
We do not, however, leave out of sight the fact that the remi- 
niscences of those earliest days transmitted to St. Luke by the 
Christians of the first generation, may have been unconsciously 
modified and remoulded in the light of subsequent experience ; 
and we will not therefore claim this passage as testifying to more 
than the conviction of the Palestinian Church, some twenty-five 
years after the resurrection, that Peter did on the Day of Pentecost 
behave and speak as though he knew beforehand what spiritual 
effects Christian Baptism would produce, a knowledge which in 
the nature of the case could only have been derived from the 
Lord Himself. This passage therefore indirectly testifies to the 
belief in Dominical institution, as held by the Mother Church 
of Christendom less than a generation after the end of Christ’s 
earthly life. 

(3) The two foregoing considerations have reference ulti- 
mately to the beliefs of the Church of Jerusalem, the fountain- 
head of all Christian tradition, shortly after the middle of the 
first century of our era. But to this may be added a consideration 
based upon probabilities arising out of admitted facts. If Christian 
Baptism does not rest upon the declared will of Jesus Himself it 
must be regarded as the continuation within Christianity, either 
of John’s eschatological baptism, or of Jewish proselyte-baptism. 
(There is not the slightest reason for supposing that the first 
Christians were influenced by the practice of the Essenes.) Now 
it is not likely that the disciples of Jesus would, in the absence of 
express Instructions from Him, have continued the custom peculiar 
to John. From the point of view of our Lord’s followers, John 
had no importance save as the forerunner of the Messiah icemte 
that is but little in the kingdom of God is greater than he” 2) ; 
and there is no reason why a custom of his should have been 
supposed to be invested with an authority which did not belong 

Lt Acisings: 2 Matt. xi. 1x—Luke vil. 28, 


Critique of the “ Mystery” Hypothesis 417 


to its author. This view, moreover, leaves unexplained the 
immense importance attributed to the use of “the name of the 
Lord Jesus” by the earliest Christians: it is not likely that 
the baptism of John was ever administered in the name of John, 
either by the Baptist himself or by his later disciples. “The 
second hypothesis, that Christian Baptism represents the mere 
survival of Jewish proselyte-baptism, appears equally unsatisfactory. 
Proselyte-baptism could ex hypothesi only be administered to 
“inners of the Gentiles,” who were assumed to be polluted 
with idolatry and stained with all the vices of the Graeco-Roman 
world ; and to invite orthodox Jews, members of the holy nation, 
such as were the three thousand baptized on the Day of Pentecost, 
to submit to this rite would have been to offer them a gratuitous 
insult, if such an invitation had no better authority behind it than 
St. Peter’s own sense of the fitness of things. 

Both these hypotheses, therefore, are quite inadequate to 
explain the deeply impressive phenomenon of the universal preva- 
lence of Christian Baptism from the earliest days of the movement 
onwards: and the use of the ‘‘ Method of Residues”’ suggests 
that the true explanation is to be found in some command, or 
expression of purpose, given by the Lord Himself. 

We claim, then, that for the unbiassed explorer of the origins 
of Christian Initiation these three considerations constitute a 
group of direction-signs, converging upon the supposition that 
our Lord, during His earthly life or through one of the resur- 
rection-visions, conveyed to His followers some clear indication 
of His will in the matter; and that by themselves they would 
render “ Dominical institution”? at least much more probable 
than any other hypothesis, even if no record of any facts which 
could be interpreted as such an “ institution > had survived. 
Another finger-post, pointing the same way, is to be seen in the 
prediction of the Baptist that the Messiah would inaugurate a 
“ Spirit-baptism,” which (in 5t. Mark’s version) is explicitly 
contrasted with the speaker’s own ‘‘ water-baptism.” * Deeply 
significant, too, Is the fact that Jesus Himself, having submitted 
to John’s “‘ baptism of repentance > in Jordan, experiences forth- 
with the illapse of the Spirit, which mediates to Him the full 
realisation of His divine Sonship and therewith some unimagin- 
able consciousness of new birth, as expressed in the mystic locution 


1 Mark i. 8; Matt. iii. rr—Luke iu. 16. 
2E 


4.18 The Origins of the Sacraments 


“Thou art my Son, to-day have I begotten thee.”1 It does not 
appear an exaggeration to suggest that by undergoing this momentous 
experience, in which the interior influx of the Spirit was super-added 
to the exterior affusion of water, our Lord Himself,in Hisown Person, 
transformed the water-baptism of Johninto Christian Spirit-baptism. 

We are now in a position to effect our final evaluation of the 
evidence. If we place in that scale of the balance which represents 
‘ Dominical institution’? the cumulative probabilities set out 
above, adding thereto the feather-weight of the Matthaean 
testimony ; and if we throw into the opposite scale what is in the 
last resort the only positive argument for “accidental origin,” 
namely, the assumption of our Lord’s “ eschatologically limited 
outlook,” an assumption which we have already seen to be of a 
highly arbitrary naturé and devoid of any real weight, the reader 
will be able to judge for himself which scale must be taken to sink 
and which to “kick the beam.” If, in Butler’s words, “‘ proba- 
bility is the very guide of life,’2 and if, in dealing with events 
which lie on the further side of a gulf of nearly nineteen centuries, 
a very high degree of probability may be taken as the practical 
equivalent of certainty, in sacred as in profane history, the 
“ Dominical institution,” in some form, of Christian Initiation 
may be regarded as reasonably assured. 

If a more precise determination of the mode of this “ institu- 
tion” be demanded, the following theory may be tentatively put 
forward. The Fourth Gospel tells us that, towards the beginning 
of His ministry, Jesus “‘came into the land of Judaea, and there 

. . baptized,” at a time when John was still engaged in adminis- 
tering Azs baptism, at Aenon near to Salim (ill. 22, 23). This 
statement is amplified in iv. 1 by the note that the baptism of 
Jesus soon outstripped that of John in popularity, and slightly 
modified in the following verse by the observation that Jesus 
(like St. Paul at a later date *) did not Himself act as the ministrant 
of baptism, but delegated this function to His disciples. If these 
statements are historical (and there seems to be no reason why 
they should not be 4) a probable outline of events suggests itself ; 


* Luke iii. 22 (according to the “‘ Western,” and apparently more probable, 
reading), 


2 Analogy of Religion, Introduction. 8 See above, p. arg, n. 2. 

4 It is coming to be universally admitted that the Fourth Gospel contains 
at least a large infusion of good and reliable tradition, and the details noted 
above may well belong to such tradition. 





\ 


Conclusion 419 


namely, (1) our Lord receives baptism from John, and through it 
the influx of “‘ Spirit’ ; (2) He consequently (if we may, without 
irreverence, employ human language in this regard) conceives 
the idea of a Messianic baptism, superior to the Forerunner’s 
baptism, which will admit to the “Kingdom” (that 1s, to the 
New Dispensation) and impart ‘‘ Holy Spirit” ; (3) He Himself 
administers, or provides for the administration of, this baptism 
during His earthly lifetime, as the means of initiating men into 
the little group of His adherents, which was the nucleus of the 
future Ecclesia ; (4) this pre-Passional administration of Baptism 
was, however, necessarily imperfect, just as the one pre-Passional 
celebration of the Eucharist was imperfect! ; though Jesus 
received the Spirit for Himself, at His own baptism, He could 
not as yet impart Spirit to others, “‘ for Spirit was not yet’ [so far 
as our Lord’s adherents were concerned] “‘ because Jesus was 
not yet glorified,” 2 in other words, because He had still to win 
the gift of the Spirit for His new Israel by His suffering and 
death. Consequently (5) through one or more of the resur- 
rection-appearances He intimates to His followers that the pre- 
liminary water-baptism which they have received, whether from 
John or Himself, will be supplemented and validated by the gift 
of the Spirit (“‘ ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many 
days hence”’®), and that the complete rite of Initiation is hence- 
forth to be the means of admission into the new People of God.* 


Vi 


CONCLUSION 


If the foregoing considerations are well founded, we are 
entitled to conclude that the “‘ institution,” in the sense previously 
defined, of the two original and fundamental sacraments, Initiation 
and Communion, by the Founder of Christianity Himself, may 
be taken as proved, in the sense that the historical evidence for 
this hypothesis would be regarded as sufficient by an unbiassed 
inquirer. The outlines of the traditional theory stand fast, 
though a certain amount of reconstruction and restatement has 


1 See the Note at the end of this essay. 2 John vil. 39. 
8 Acts.i. 5, 4 Matt. xxviii. 19. 


\ 


\ 


420 The Origins of the Sacraments 


been necessary in regard to detail. It may be reasonably asserted 
that the affirmation of the Dominical origin of the sacraments 
rests upon a much wider and more nearly contemporaneous 
consensus of testimony than do the affirmations of the birth of 
Herodotus at Halicarnassus or of the martyrdom of St. Peter at 
Rome ; and yet, of these two latter affirmations the first is not 
challenged at all, and the second is only disputed by those who 
on other grounds are strongly opposed to the claims which are 
made in the name of St. Peter by the present Church of Rome. 
If, then, the reader is still prepared to admit the cogency of the 
contention developed in the second section of this essay—namely, 
(1) that zf the sacraments were really instituted by Christ they 
must be of quite overwhelming importance in the Christian life, 
and (2) that if they are’ of such overwhelming importance, it can 
only be because the grounds of their efficacy contain an element 
which is simply “given” or objective—a task of no small 
significance will have been accomplished. 

But though the argument set forth above would, we believe, 
be good enough for a student who approached the question 
without parti pris, we do not claim for it mathematical irresisti- 
bility. As it will always be possible (st parva licet componere 
magnis) for those who are subconsciously dominated by anti-papal 
sentiment to deny any sort of connection between St. Peter and 
Rome, so doubtless it will always be open to those who feel an 
unconquerable aversion from the idea of objectively efficacious 
sacraments to reject the case for Dominical institution on one 
ground or another. ‘To affirm this is not to fall into the vulgarity 
of imputing a lack of intellectual honesty to those who, like 
Eduard Meyer, are convinced a priori that “The thought, that 
the congregation . . . enters into a mystical or magical com- 
munion with its Lord through the reception of bread and wine 
. . . can never have been uttered by Jesus Himself’ 1; it is 
merely to draw attention to the well-known fact that, in the 
concrete processes of psychic life, thought and feeling mutually 
suffuse and interpenetrate one another, and that men’s judgments 
as to what Is true, especially in regard to historical questions on 
which vital practical issues depend, are apt to be insensibly deflected 
by the unconscious wish that some particular solution may turn out 
to be true. Whether the influence of such disturbing factors has 


1 E. Meyer, Ursprung u. Anfange des Christentums (1921), i. 179. 


Conclusion 421 


been successfully eliminated from our own exposition or not must 
be left to the reader’s decision. 

It does not in any case fall within the scope of this essay to 
deal in detail with the ancient and indurated anti-sacramental 
praeiudicium, which is the real, though hidden, source of the 
inhibition which restrains many religious persons from so much 
as considering the possibility that historic Christianity may 
actually be in possession of the marvellous treasure which it claims. 
The unexpressed conviction, which to those who hold it appears 
axiomatic, that a religion of priests, sacraments, liturgies, and 
ecclesiastical institutions—a religion, that is, which avowedly 
expresses itself through a phenomenal body or time-garment— 
must in the nature of things be a lower and inferior kind of 
religion in comparison with one consisting solely of intellectual 
concepts or ethical values, eludes dialectical attack by virtue of 
its emotional origin and its unprovable character. It is not, 
indeed, difficult to formulate the arguments on which it is 
nominally founded, as (a) that it is degrading to our conception 
of God to suppose that He can or will produce spiritual effects 
through the direct instrumentality of material things or external 
and sensible ceremonies ; () that sacraments understood in any 
other than a purely symbolic sense involve a sacerdotalism which 
is inevitably hostile to individual and civic freedom ; (c) that the 
belief in their objective efficacy is refuted by the sins of many 
who habitually receive them and the lofty Christian virtues of 
many who, like the Quakers, reject them. Nor is it harder to 
set against each of these arguments a group of considerations 
which would seem in logic to cancel it. To the first, it might 
be replied that God has never told us that He cannot or will not 
work spiritual effects through matter or the phenomenal world ; 
that unless we are prepared to accept a Deistic or Manichaean 
dualism, He is doing so every day through His immanent Real 
Presence in the vast multiform sacrament of the visible universe 5 
that (as Bishop Gore has pointed out) no spiritual operation 
ascribed to the sacraments of the Church is more sharply super- 
naturalistic, or bears a more frankly ex opere operato character, 
than the miracle whereby the creation of a new, unique, and 
individual human personality supervenes upon the consummation 
of what, considered in itself, is a purely material process. To 
the second the obvious rejoinder is, that whilst any institution 


422 The Origins of the Sacraments 


existing amongst men is doubtless capable of perversion, Catholic 
sacerdotalism, involving as it does that impersonal conception of 
the part played by the human officiant which is expressed in the 
doctrine that “the unworthiness of the minister hindereth not 
the effect of the sacraments,” is in principle much less liable to 
abuse by private ambition than theories of the ministerial function 
which by placing its essence in preaching and exhortation make 
its eficaciousness to depend entirely upon the talents, virtues 
and personal qualities of the individual minister ; and that the 
history of Calvinistic Geneva and Puritan Massachusetts is 
sufficient to show that ecclesiastical tyranny has no necessary 
connection with any one type of sacramental theory. The 
third is sufficiently countered by two principles which are inherent 
in the Catholic theology of sacramental grace, namely, Deus non 
alligatur medits, and Homo potest sacramentorum gratiae obicem 
ponere. But the real vitality of the anti-sacramental praeiudicium 
resides in the emotional energy with which it is charged, and which 
flows from various underground sources—fear of the Papacy, the 
xenophobia which makes beliefs held by members of other nations 
than one’s own appear for that reason alone as intrinsically repulsive, 
the unconscious survival of dualistic modes of thought which sunder 
God from all contact with matter, hereditary influence, and social 
suggestion. “Those who are subject to this prepossession must 
always argue back from it to a negation of ‘‘ Dominical insti- 
tution” ; it will always appear self-evident to them that Jesus, 
as the highest spiritual teacher known to our race, cannot have 
intended to found what they believe to be a religion of the lower 
grade, and that therefore any evidence that He did so intend must 
be unreliable. 

Historical argument alone can no more dissolve so tough and 
closely knit a psychic structure than it can create the corresponding, 
but opposite, conviction, the deep, calm, infinitely satisfying 
intuition which can only be experienced by those who know the 
Catholic system from within, and which reveals to them the 
ineffable harmony and homogeneity of the sacramental principle 
with the kindred truths of God’s immanence in the whole world 
of created being and of His unique self-expression in the 
Incarnation. But faith can move mountains, and love wear 
down seemingly adamantine barriers; and the believer in the 
traditional interpretation of the Christian sacraments will rely 


: 


Conclusion 423 


upon their inherent power and mysterious compelling attractive- 
ness to be in the long run their most effective missionary. He 
will confidently accept the implied challenge of Dr. Kirsopp Lake’s 
words, ‘“‘ If the Catholic theory of sacraments prove in the end to 
cover all the facts, and to be the only theory which does cover 
them, it will in the end be universally accepted”? 1; and he will 
look for the ultimate fulfilment in a re-united Catholic Christen- 


dom of the promise made to the Church of the elder dispensation : 
“Tn those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold 
- out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt 
of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you, for we have 





heard that Gop is with you.” 2 


ADDITIONAL NOTE ON MARK XIV. 25 


A point connected with this /ggion may be here further explained, 


in order to elucidate the view taken in the text as to the significance 
of our Lord’s actions at the Last Supper: 


The implied contrast between the “old wine”? which our Lord 


had just drunk Himself (this is clearly indicated by the words “ I will 


not again drink . . .”’—odxétt od wh mw) and given to His disciples, 
and the “ fruit of the vine”? which He would drink “new” in the 
Kingdom of God, suggests that the imperfect and provisional character 
which in the text of the essay has been attributed to the only pre-Passional 
‘¢ celebration of the Eucharist,” may have been so thoroughgoing as to 
make it true to describe our Lord’s actions on that occasion as constituting, 
not a “‘ Eucharist’ as we know it now, but a ‘‘ shadow’ Eucharist— 
a typical object-lesson, not the mystic and glorious reality which could 
only be consummated in the “‘ Kingdom of God” (i.e. the new Christian 
dispensation) which His death was to inaugurate. If this is a permissible 
view, the Apostles at the Last Supper did not feed upon Christ, as we 
do now, in reality, but only in figure; their first real and sacramental 
Communion in the body and blood of Christ can only have been made 
after that body and blood had been glorified and freed from spatial 
limitations by the resurrection. This view completely avoids the almost 
insoluble difficulty inherent in the traditional interpretation— How 
could our Lord with His own hands give His body and blood to His 
disciples (se dat suis manibus) whilst evidently standing there before them 
in His intact, unbroken body?” It must be admitted that there is no 
ancient authority for this view: but it appears to be that favoured by 
Dr. H. L. Goudge, “‘ 1 Corinthians,” p. 105. 


1 Earlier Epistles of St. Paul, 1911, p. 434- 2 Zech. Vill. 2.3. 


, nA 
A ae 
ue i 





THE EUCHARIST 


BY WILL SPENS 


CONTENTS 


I. InTRoDUCTORY 
II. SymBpot anp SACRAMENT 
III. Tue Evcuaristic SAcriFICcE 
IV. Tue Rear Presence . 


V. Conctiusion 


427 
428 
450 
439 
445 


I 
INTRODUCTORY 


Ir has often been said that one of the greatest needs of our time 
is a satisfactory glossary of religious terms. As things stand, the 
Christian apologist finds himself confronted with a dilemma. On 
the one hand, it is possible for him to try to discard much of the 
traditional phraseology in which Christian ideas are clothed, and to 
use only such language as may be supposed to be intelligible to any 
educated person. “The obvious danger of such a policy is that he 
will, in fact, fail to convey many of the deeper and more difficult 
ideas for the expression and transmission of which the technical 
language was developed. His attempt would be like that of a man 
of science, who should try to give some account of the physical 
universe without employing any of those terms which scientists 
haveinvented. ‘The other alternative is for the apologist to accept 
frankly the terminology with which the piety and thought of the 
Church have provided him, and to draw out its significance for the 
faith of intelligent men to-day. In pursuing this task he may find 
that some of the old terms are, in fact, no longer useful ; or, again, 
he may find that they are only useful if they are given a somewhat 
different meaning from that which they originally connoted. None 
the less, this policy has certain advantages. It goes far to ensure, 
for example, that no elements of proved value in the thought of the 
past are lost by misadventure ; while since the terms which he is 
discussing are not merely intellectual but also emotional symbols, 
his thought is kept at every point in close contact with the concrete 
experience of the worshipping Church. ‘These conditions apply 
with peculiar force in dealing with a subject like the Eucharist, 
which is the acknowledged centre of the Church’s devotional life, 
and yet has, for many centuries, given rise to acute theological 
controversy. Here, if anywhere, it is obviously important that 
discussion should be synthetic, as well as clear ; and for this purpose 
it is essential that the second of the two possible policies should be 
adopted. 

In the present case, moreover, this course is clearly more con- 
venient, inasmuch as many of the terms which belong to the current 


428 The Eucharist 


coin of Eucharistic theology have been the subject of careful 
discussion in the preceding essays and the result of those discussions 
will be assumed here. “Thus the sixth essay will have made clear 
the sense in which the word “‘ grace”’ is used when we speak of 
the sacrament as a ‘‘ means of grace.” Again, much has already 
been said in the essay on the Atonement about the cross as a 
sacrifice for sin, expressive at once of sin’s awfulness and of its 
forgiveness. Still more germane, of course, to the present essay, is 
that which has immediately preceded it, in which it was urged that 
the sacraments are not merely dramatic but effectual symbols, and 
that they derive their significance from the fact of our Lord’s 
appointment. All these words—grace, sacrifice, sacraments, 
symbol—will occur again in a rather different setting in our con- 
sideration of the Eucharist, together with other terms to which 
reference has not yet been made ; but the discussion will assume, 
throughout, the general theological and historical background 
provided by the rest of this volume. 


II 
SYMBOL AND SACRAMENT 


It would probably not be denied that symbolism of some kind 
is a necessity of religion as soon as it receives a social and institu- 
tional expression. ‘That this is so would seem to be proved not 
least by the practice of those Christian bodies which have, in fact, 
set themselves, so far as possible, to do without it. Nowhere ts 
this more clear to us than in the case of the Society of Friends, 
whose emphasis upon the sovereignty of the inward aspect of 
religion has not prevented them from adopting a symbolism in 
dress and speech which was, at one time, a picturesque and well- 
known feature of English life. Symbols are, in fact, a kind of 
language which men use when words fail them. One aspect of 
this use was expressed by Pope Gregory the Great, when he spoke 
of images as the “ books of the unlettered,”’ 1 implying that words 
would be beyond their wit to read ; another aspect is expressed in 
civic, no less than in religious, ceremonies, as when the unfurling 
of a flag or the beating of a drum expresses something for which 
words would be too weak. Symbolism of this kind occurs fre- 
quently in the historical and prophetic books of the Old ‘Testament 5 

1 Gregory, Lib. ix, Ep. cv, ad Serenum. 


Symbol and Sacrament 429 


- and our Lord’s entry into Jerusalem provides a significant example 
of it in the New. In all such cases, however, the symbolism is 
dramatic or didactic. 

There is, however, another kind of symbolism to which the 
word effectual may be given, and which is no less a feature of human 
society ; and it is to this type rather than to the other that the 
Christian sacraments belong. ‘The distinctive mark ofan effectual 
symbol is that it not merely conveys a message, but effects a result. 
The accolade is a case in point. More familiar, if less obvious, 
examples are supplied by token coinage to which an authoritative 
decision of the State gives certain purchasing value, defined in 
terms of the sovereign, but quite independent of the coin’s intrinsic 
worth. A little reflection will suggest, in ever-growing number, 
other illustrations. “The essence of such symbolism lies in the 
association of certain results or opportunities with certain visible 
signs by a will which is competent to bring about those results or 
give those opportunities. To the properties which the action or 
object has in itself are added other properties which may be civic, 
social, or economic, and it is this second series of properties which 
is taken for all practical purposes as determining the nature of the 
symbolic action or object. “Those who recognise the authority 
which appoints the token do not, in fact, use or think of their florins 
as though they were counters. 

From all merely human symbolism, even of this type, the 
sacraments are, of course, differentiated by the character of the 
results and opportunities connected with them, and by the fact that 
these are determined by the will of God Himself; but none the 
less the analogy is valuable and real. When we say that the sacra- 
ments are effectual signs we mean that certain actions or objects 
are invested by divine authority with certain spiritual or supernatural 
properties. “Che action of washing, for example, in Baptism admits 
the baptized not merely into the visible fellowship of the Church 
but into the regenerate order, the Kingdom of God, of which the 
Church on earth is the expression. In the case of the Eucharist, 
the bread and the wine are given by Christ’s ordinance new proper- 
ties, which, while they do not annihilate the natural properties of 
giving sustenance and refreshment, yet so supersede these that we 
can rightly speak of the objects themselves as wholly changed and 
transfigured. As Theodoret says, “‘ They remain in their former 
substance and shape and form, and are still visible and as they were 


4.30 The Eucharist 


before ; but they are apprehended as what they have become, and 
are believed and adored as being what they are believed to be.” + 

These considerations, moreover, will enable us to make clear 
what was involved when Christian theology found itself unable to 
rest contented with the close parallelism between Baptism and the 
Eucharist on which the earlier Fathers, notably St. Augustine, 
used to insist. “The form which the development took was the 
claim that the Eucharist contained not only the two elements which 
were recognised in Baptism—namely, sacramentum and wvirtus 
sacramenti—but a third element also, which was distinguished 
as res sacramenti. In other words, it was claimed that in the 
Eucharist there was not only a symbolism of action, but a symbolism 
of objects as well. And this threefold distinction is a development 
which is reflected in Anglican formularies, where our Catechism 
speaks, in the case of the Eucharist, of “sign,” “ thing signified,” 
and “‘ benefits.” If weask, moreover, the reason which prompted 
this development we shall be compelled to find it in the words which 
our Lord is represented as using at the institution of the Eucharist 
—words which have no parallel in the case of Baptism. “To the 
narratives of that institution we must now turn with a view to 
discovering what our Lord meant by the effectual symbolism of 
objects which He then established. 


Ill 
THe EucHaristic SACRIFICE 


If a student of comparative religion, not otherwise acquainted 
with Christianity, were to enter a church where the Holy Mysteries 
were being celebrated, and were afterwards asked what kind of 
service he had been attending, he would undoubtedly say that it 
was some sacrificial rite ; and he would find his answer endorsed 
if he were to turn from the service which he had witnessed to the 
earliest narratives of its institution. It is not only that the descrip- 
tions of the rite in the New ‘Testament are marked by certain 
expressions which have all the appearance of liturgical fixity, nor 
again that the words used by our Lord, such as the reference to the 
new covenant, are strongly suggestive of sacrifice. Even more 
significant is the fact that the records are agreed in placing the rite 
in a context which is replete with sacrificial associations. On the 


1 Dialogue II, P.G, Ixxxiil. 165-168. 


The Eucharistic Sacrifice 431 


one hand, that is to say, it is made clear, particularly by St. Luke, 
that the Last Supper, and the Eucharist which was its climax, took 
place under the shadow of the Passover ; and the force of this fact 
is not diminished, if we adopt the Johannine view as to the date of 
the crucifixion. On the other hand, all our evidence makes it 
clear that the rite at the Last Supper was connected by the closest 
ties with that sacrifice of Christ upon the cross which was so soon 
to be consummated. 

In the light of these facts the natural meaning of our Lord’s 
phrase, ‘Take, eat, this is my body,” and of the corresponding 
and even more startling phrase as to His blood is surely not difficult 
to determine : they must have meant that in receiving the bread 
which He had broken and the cup which He had blessed the 
apostles were made partakers in a sacrifice, and thereby in the 
blessings of a sacrifice, in which He was to be the victim. We 
need not suppose, nor does the evidence suggest, that ritual partici- 
pation in sacrifices was always regarded as securing and conditioning 
spiritual consequences. We cannot assign, for example, to the 
Paschal meal a clear sacramental significance. But this is bound 
up with the fact that the Jews had apparently ceased to assign to 
the killing of the Paschal victims any supernatural consequences. 
In the case, however, of a sacrifice which was regarded as truly 
propitiatory (and therefore in the case of our Lord’s death) 
it is impossible to believe that devout ritual participation in an 
appointed manner would not have been supposed both to secure 
and normally to condition participation in the blessings which 
flowed from it. 

Or, again, if we turn to passages of the New Testament other 
than the records of the institution, the same conclusion holds 
good. St. Paul’s language, for instance, seems definitely to 
require this view ; for he was writing for persons familiar in a 
greater or less degree with Mystery Religions, and it is incredible 
that he should not have guarded his language far more carefully, 
had he not regarded the Eucharist as a sacrifice, and believed that 
devout ritual participation in this sacrifice secured and conditioned 
participation in spiritual blessings. “There is no evidence, more- 
over, that St. Paul was subject to any criticism on the score of 
his Eucharistic teaching, and it must therefore be taken as repre- 
senting what the apostles understood our Lord to have meant. 
Once more, even the sixth chapter of the Fourth Gospel gives little 


432 The Eucharist 


real support to any different conception of the Eucharist. If by 
eating His flesh our Lord is taken to have meant merely the 
reception of His teaching, then His language as recorded could 
only be pronounced unaccountably misleading and provocative. 
A real difficulty is removed if the issue was intended to lie not 
between the Jews’ literal interpretation of His words and a final 
explanation that eating our Lord’s flesh meant receiving His 
teaching, but between that literal interpretation and the sacra- 
mental explanation which the Eucharist afforded. On such a 
view the phrase “‘ the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit 
and are life” referred to His whole foregoing teaching, including 
that on the Eucharist. Whatever view be held as to this or as 
to the historical character of the discourse—and on that question 
no view is here expressed—it is safe to say that its language could 
not be what it is unless the Evangelist either himself understood 
the discourse as having a sacramental and sacrificial reference or 
was at least endeavouring to account for a current tradition of 
Dominical teaching in this sense which he could not ignore. 
Neither the Fourth Gospel nor any other evidence! affords any 
real ground for setting aside that conception. As we have seen, 
it is implied by the other Evangelists and by St. Paul ; and it may 
be summed up by saying that the Eucharistic Host and Chalice 
not only represent our Lord as appropriable in a visible rite as 
our sacrifice, but also render Him thus appropriable ; an idea 
which carries with it participation in His life. 

Enough has already been said to justify the earlier statement 
that a stranger present at the Eucharist would naturally describe 
it as a sacrificial rite. It is necessary, however, in view of current 
misunderstandings and controversies, to carry the analysis further, 
and it is the more profitable to do so at this moment in view of 
recent developments of Eucharistic theology associated with the 


1 Cf. the Rev. W. L. Knox’s Second Appendix entitled ‘“‘ The Primitive 
Eucharist ’’ at the end of his St. Paul and the Church of Ferusalem. It is not 
easy to take seriously the attempts which have been made to use the Didache as 
an argument against a sacramental view of the Eucharist. We need only point 
to the standard of exegesis in the book, which is not merely trivial but on 
occasion manifestly superficial and untrue. For example, shortly before the 
often quoted passage on the Eucharist occurs the sentence: ‘‘ Let not your fasts 
be with the hypocrites ; for they fast on Mondays and Thursdays, but do you 
fast on Wednesdays and Fridays” ; while shortly after it occurs the sentence : 
‘Do not test or examine any prophet who is speaking in a spirit; for every sin 
shall be forgiven, but this sin shall not be forgiven.” 


The Eucharistic Sacrifice 433 


name of Pere de la Taille.1 The definition of sacrifice from 
which we shall best approach this task is that which describes 
it as consisting in two main and necessary elements, one the 
death of the victim, and the other certain ritual acts, very 
often concerned with the blood, which invested the death with 
a supernatural significance or effect. The word ‘death ”’ is used 
rather than “ destruction”’ because, although it is true that not 
all sacrificial gifts are animate and therefore cannot be said to die 
when sacrificed, yet the word “ death ”’ is in fact more applicable 
in cases where a living victim is offered. It does not, that is to 
say, beg the question of the purpose of the killing of the victim, 
but leaves the way open for the explanation that at least one purpose 
of the victim’s death is the release and the appropriation of its life.? 
In the case of the sacrifice of the death of Christ the importance 
of this point is obvious. “The technical term generally used for 
this element in a sacrifice is immolation or mactation. The 
principal objection which has been urged and rightly urged by 
Anglican theologians against what has been until recently the 
dominant tradition of Roman Catholic teaching, is that their 
doctrine of the Eucharistic sacrifice appeared to suggest a further 
immolation of Christ in every Mass. This idea is obviously 
inconsistent with the New ‘Testament, and with its clear belief 
in the all-sufficing efficacy of the death of Christ. At the same 
time the alternative to such a view appeared to be that the Mass 
could only be called a sacrifice in a sense so subordinate and 
secondary, and so different from that entertained by Roman or 
Orthodox theology, as to make the description at best misleading. 
‘The importance of a definition of sacrifice on the lines suggested 
above is that it makes it possible to describe the Eucharist as a 
sacrifice In a primary sense, without involving or suggesting any 
repetition of the cross, 


1 In view of a considerable similarity between his doctrine of the 
Eucharistic Sacrifice and my own, it should be said that the position adopted 
in this essay was worked out independently of Pére de la Taille’s work, and 
in fact before I had become acquainted with it. It can be most fully studied 
in his Mysterium Fidet de augustissimo Corporis et Sanguinis Christi Sacrificio 
atque Sacramento. 

2 This fact has led Pére de la Taille to say that “‘conversion”’ would be a 
better term than “ destruction ”’ to use of the sacrificial gift. In O.T. sacrifices 
(and in many others) ritual acts concerned with the blood would often appear 
to involve this conception, the blood representing the life to the worshippers. 


Zs 


434 The Eucharist 


For, in the first place, it is asserted on this view that the act 
of destruction, in virtue of which the Eucharist is a sacrifice, 1s 
the one historical death of our Lord on the cross, not some further 
act of destruction or other corresponding change. But, in the 
second place, it goes on to discover in sacrifice a second element 
which is no less characteristic or essential than the victim’s death. 
We can best see the character and the necessity of this element by 
an illustration. Suppose that Abraham had slain Isaac without 
ceremony, instead of preparing to slay him on an altar or in ac- 
cordance with some other convention which clearly expressed his 
purpose of sacrifice. Would one regard that as fulfilment of a 
command to sacrifice his son? ‘Think of any other sacrifice, 
actual or legendary, and imagine all ritual acts omitted, leaving 
simply an act of destruction, not performed in a ritual manner. 
Whatever the purpose of the act, would it fully correspond to 
what we mean by a sacrifice, save as we have come to apply the 
term in a metaphorical sense? In short, is not some ritual act 
which expressly invests the death with its sacred purpose or signi- 
ficance at least as characteristic an element in sacrifice as is the 
death itself ? 

If, as appears to be the case, this last question must be answered 
in the affirmative, the explanation is not far to seek. Consider 
first honorific sacrifices. It is not possible to regard these simply 
as gifts to the deity worshipped ; the gift is so made as to constitute 
an act of homage, a formal recognition and acknowledgment of 
his sovereign claims. There lies the explanation, for example, 
of the fact that the inherent value of that which is surrendered is, 
on the whole, less important than that it should have been expressly 
appointed or that it should possess a natural symbolism ; and there 
also lies the explanation of the need for such act or acts as will 
expressly invest the rite with its significance. In consequence, 
if a formal definition of a sacrifice is to be attempted it would 
appear necessary so to frame it as to treat this aspect as an essential 
element, by asserting, for example, that a sacrifice is a series of 
related actions dictated by belief in some Higher Power and 
involving (a) the giving or giving up of something, in and through 
a death, to a supernatural Being—or to secure a supernatural end 
or to secure supernatural aid ; and (4) an act or acts dependent on 
or closely related to the death, and of such a character as formally 
to invest this with supernatural significance, and thus to render 


The Eucharistic Sacrifice 435 


the rite an express acknowledgment of a relation to some Higher 
Power. 

The need for some such definition appears to be no less real 
in the case of propitiatory sacrifices than in the case of honorific 
sacrifices. We would hesitate to describe as a propitiatory 
sacrifice an act of destruction, even if this was conceived as 
effecting a propitiation, unless the act of destruction was per- 
formed in such a manner or accompanied by such further acts 
as served to express its purpose and significance. If a god was 
believed to have required the death, say, of the king’s son in 
consequence of tribal sin, and if the king’s son was promptly slain 
without ceremony, we should say that the purpose of his death 
was the propitiation of the god, but we should not describe what 
took place as a propitiatory sacrifice. We should so describe it if 
the manner of his death, or other closely related ritual acts, gave 
expression to the purpose and significance of the death ; and an 
explanation of the apparent necessity for such ritual acts may 
again be found in the fact that they render the rite an express 
acknowledgment of a relation to God, in this case a relation which 
has gone wrong. It is precisely in virtue of the presence and signi- 
ficance of such acts that there is not only a purpose of propitia- 
tion, but an avowal of that purpose. The rite thus becomes an 
express acknowledgment of the need for propitiation and, in so far 
as this propitiation is held to be necessitated by sin, an acknowledg- 
ment of the nature of sin and its significance. Nor is acknowledg- 
ment before God the whole story. Propitiatory sacrifices are 
conceived not only as an acknowledgment by man before God, 
but, in so far as they are thought of as divinely appointed, as an 
authoritative declaration to man of the significance and effect of 
sin. In short, such sacrifices have a manward as well as a God- 
ward reference, and the declaration to man as well as the acknow- 
ledgment before God implies ritual acts which expressly assign its 
significance to the act of destruction. 

If, then, we are justified in regarding as an essential and 
important element in sacrifice, no less essential or important than 
immolation, acts which expressly invest the immolation with its 
significance, the first condition is secured for a solution of our 
problem. It may be noted at once that as shown, for example, 
by the case of the Passover, it is such acts, rather than the killing 
of the victim, which are necessarily performed by the priest. 

Z2EZ 


436 The Eucharist 


On this ground, and for the sake of brevity, in what follows such 
acts will be referred to as “‘ sacerdotal acts.” 

It will by now be obvious that the view to which we are 
approaching is that the Last Supper and the Eucharist are not 
separate sacrifices from that of Calvary, but supply a necessary 
element in the sacrifice of Calvary, by expressly investing our 
Lord’s death before God and man with its sacrificial significance. 
There is nothing, moreover, in sacrificial conceptions to preclude 
the multiplication of the sacerdotal acts. In the case of our 
Lord’s sacrifice such multiplication was necessary if that sacrifice 
was to be truly proclaimed, and its benefits duly appropriated, by 
successive generations. And this necessity is not less but greater 
in view of the absolute significance we ascribe to our Lord’s death 
in contrast with the “‘ types and shadows”? of the older dispensa- _ 
tion. For, as has already been pointed out elsewhere in this 
volume, the essence of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross consists in 
the fact that it is an acknowledgment before God and man of the 
nature and consequences of sin. It is sin’s “‘ covering”’ or pro- 
pitiation, which is a necessary antecedent to man’s reconciliation 
with God. What is asserted here is that the Eucharist is that part 
of the sacrifice of Calvary which, by our Lord’s appointment, 
expressly invests His death with its significance and thus renders it 
such an acknowledgment. By it He ensured that Christian wor- 
ship should be centred in the confession of God’s infinite holiness 
and of the awfulness of sin, and that His worshippers of all times 
and places should only on the basis of that wholly evangelical con- 
fession stand secure in His fellowship and grace. It is not an 
accident that in every ancient liturgy the prayer of Consecration 
issues from the solemn accents, at once uplifting and humbling, of 
the Sanctus. In other words, while our Lord’s death supplies in 
itself an adequate expression of the nature and consequences of 
sin, our profiting from the satisfaction thus effected must surely 
involve our acknowledgment and recognition of this. Such re- 
cognition requires expression no less than any other element in 
religion ; while, if a particular manner of acknowledgment has 
been appointed, then it is for us to give our recognition this ex- 
pression rather than to urge, like Naaman, the equal or greater 
efficacy of possible alternatives. | 

On the other hand, we cannot regard the Eucharist simply as 
an acknowledgment by man that our Lord’s death exhibits the 


The Eucharistic Sacrifice 437 


nature and results of sin, an acknowledgment which is effected by 
our expressly assigning to that death the significance of an expiatory 
sacrifice! At the Eucharist, our Lord’s death is invested with 
this significance in and through a rite which, since it affords parti- 
cipation in the blessings of our Lord’s sacrifice, must be held to be 
performed with divine authority. Because it is in and through 
such a rite, and therefore with such authority, that the Church’s 
ministers solemnly invest our Lord’s death with an expiatory 
significance, and thus acknowledge before God and declare to man 
the nature of sin, they may properly be termed priests. On the 
other hand, such a statement of the position is something less than 
the truth. ‘This Divine authority is possessed, as we believe, 
because the Eucharist is celebrated by our Lord’s command, 
whether given at the Last Supper or through the Holy Spirit to 
the early Church. In accordance with our conception of Chris- 
tians not as external to our Lord, but as members of His body, 
Christian acts performed by His command must be thought of less 
as performed by His authority, than as performed by Him through 
the members of His mystical body. Asa result, He is to be con- 
ceived as Himself the Priest in the Eucharist, no less than at the 
Last Supper ; but because His ministers are also our representatives 
we participate in His sacerdotal act. 

On sucha view the Eucharist isa sacrifice, not only or primarily 
because we offer thanksgiving or give money or hallow bread and 
wine, or even because Christ is there given to be our food, but 
because by word and act, by the words of institution and in the 
double consecration and through the act of Communion, His 
death is proclaimed, before God and man, as an expiatory sacrifice, 
and because this express investing of a sacrificial death with its 
significance is no mere declaration, adding nothing beyond declara- 


>’ 


1 The phrase “‘expiatory sacrifice’ is used as best describing a sacrifice 
which is regarded as propitiatory alike in intention and effect, and as necessitated 
bysin. That this significance is assigned to our Lord’s death by the Eucharist, 
and that the early Church regarded the institution as assigning to it this signifi- 
cance, is made clear by the words of institution, as given in the various records 
and as taken up into the Eucharistic liturgies. Our Lord’s body is described 
as given for us, His blood as poured out for us, as inaugurating a new coverant, 
and as poured out unto the remission of sins. Even apart from the presence of 
the last of these phrases we should be justified in reading its meaning into any 
description of our Lord’s sacrifice which represents this as propitiatory, since 
the propitiation thus effected was, from the first and as a matter of course, held 
to be necessitated through sin. 


438 The Eucharist 


tion, but is itself an essential element in such a sacrifice, required, 
not by some trick of definition, but in order to supply an overt 
acknowledgment and declaration of the nature and consequences of 
sin. Whether we think of the cross as the one sacrifice or of each 
Eucharist as a sacrifice, whether we speak of Christ as having been 
once offered upon the cross or as being offered in every Mass, 
depends simply on whether we are thinking in terms of one or other 
of two essential aspects of sacrifice. If we think of sacrifice in 
terms of the act of destruction, Christ was once offered upon the 
cross. If we think of sacrifice in terms of the sacerdotal acts 
which expressly invest an act of destruction with its significance, 
then Christ is offered in every Mass, Either view is correct 
from its own angle : and for either view the death is fundamental. 
Nor does a choice appear possible or desirable between one or ~ 
other mode of expression. Both must be used in their proper con- 
text if we are not to minimise unduly either the cross or the 
Eucharist. 

‘There is one subordinate point in regard to sacrifice which 
appears to be of sufficient value and relevance to deserve emphasis. 
Details in the symbolism of the sacerdotal acts are often highly 
significant and of real devotional value. It is in this connection 
that it appears possible to retain and use the truth embodied 
in conceptions of the Eucharistic sacrifice which emphasise the 
offering of bread and wine. ‘The fundamental fact in the conse- 
cration is that Christ is given to be appropriated as our sacrifice, 
and that His death is thus expressly invested with a sacrificial 
significance. But, in subordination to this, we may well dwell on 
the symbolism of the means by which it is secured : on the conse- 
cration of typical gifts of God ; on how much is thereby made of 
gifts so common or so capable of abuse ; and, by that identification 
of the worshipper with the thing consecrated, which is so frequent 
an idea in sacrifice, on the purpose of hallowing ourselves, not 
to become as many separate and inadequate sacrifices as there 
are individuals, but to become one with and in Him who is the 
only perfect sacrifice. If another conception of the Eucharistic 
sacrifice seems to have been omitted which is too deep-rooted to be 
thus ignored, it must be replied that the solemn assertion, before 
God as well as before man, of the expiatory character of our Lord’s 
death is in itself in the strongest possible manner a pleading of that 
death. Further pleading of that death in the Eucharistic liturgies 


The Real Presence 439 


is valuable as bringing out what is thus involved. It can add 
nothing to what is involved. 

Tosum up. ‘Thewriters of the New Testament, when they 
speak of the Eucharist, are unanimous in bringing it into the closest 
connection at once with the Passover and with the cross. “They 
represent our Lord as celebrating this rite, if not for the first time, 
at least with a new (sacrificial) significance, on the eve of His 
passion and death. “They imply a clear purpose on His part that 
He should be done to death at the hands of wicked men ; and they 
show Him forestalling the certainty that His death would appear 
to His disciples as no more than the judicial murder of a martyr by 
giving to it, in advance, a significance which, in the light of the 
resurrection and ascension, would supersede that other interpretation 
altogether. By what He said and did at the Last Supper, and in 
our repetition of what He then did, our Lord invested and invests 
His death with its significance as a sacrifice for sin ; and it was 
because of this that St. Paul could write, “ As often as ye eat 
this bread and drink this cup ye show forth the Lord’s death till 
he come,” and that the writer to the Hebrews could describe the 
cross as an altar (Heb. xiii. 10). Both alike, the cross and the 
Eucharist, are integral to the sacrifice of our redemption. ‘The 
fundamental element—fundamental because of the nature of Him 
whose life was offered on the cross—is the death of Christ; and 
that immolation once made can never be repeated. But equally 
necessary in its bearing upon the salvation of the world is the rite 
by which down the long succession of ages our Lord makes His 
death to be our sacrifice and enables us to appropriate the blessings 
thus secured. 


IV 
THe REAL PRESENCE 


The doctrine of the Real Presence, more perhaps than any 
other element in Eucharistic teaching, is charged with all the warmth 
of Christian devotion. “The idea of a special presence of God 
would seem to be in itself one with which religion cannot dispense. 
It is what gives to many moments of spiritual experience, described 
in both the Old Testament and the New, their peculiar vividness 
and freshness of appeal. When Jacob says “ Surely the Lord is in 
this place, and I knew it not”; or when Moses, at the burning 


440 The Eucharist 


bush, “‘ hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God” ; or when 
the psalmist cries “ Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or 
whither shall I flee from thy presence ?”’ or, again, “ “The Lord 
is in his holy temple, the Lord’s throne is in heaven ”’—in all 
these cases we are confronted with utterances and actions which 
belong to the very heart of religion. Jewish faith in particular 
distinguished three modes of this presence—in Nature, in the 
Chosen People, and in that central shrine where the invisible glory 
of the Shekinah brooded over the Mercy-seat ; yet there is nothing 
to show that their emphasis upon any one of these displaced or 
weakened their hold upon the others. In all cases, moreover, 
the context of the term presence suggests that its primary 
reference is to the experience of grace, and that that reference 
provides the best key to its definition. Inthe New Testament we - 
find this element of Jewish faith, as we should expect, transfigured 
by the fact of the Incarnation and the dispensation of the Spirit. 
Christ is Himself the personal embodiment of the divine glory 
and tabernacled amongst men. He promised that when His visible 
presence was withdrawn He would still be present in the midst of 
believers gathered in His name; and the Epistles bear abundant 
witness to the way in which the earliest Christian communities 
found this promise fulfilled in their experience of the Holy Spirit 
and their incorporation into Christ in the Church. ‘The doctrine 
of the Real Presence asserts that in addition to (but as a consequence 
of) the more general presence in the Church, the Eucharist 
affords a presence of our Lord as our sacrifice, and that this 
presence is of such a character as to give opportunity for full and 
concrete expression of our worship of the Lamb. 

No more than in the case of the Jewish Shekinah are other 
modes of our Lord’s presence depreciated or excluded; and, 
indeed, all true Eucharistic theology insists that in the Eucharist 
our Lord is present as priest as well as victim, “The sacramental 
presence, that is to say, depends upon and derives from Christ’s 
priestly presence in the Church. But that is not to say that the 
Eucharistic presence has not its own characteristics and claims. 
In the Eucharist, Christ is present as the Lamb slain from before 
the foundation of the world ; and the space devoted in each of the 
Gospels to the narratives of the Passion and crucifixion imply that 
this is an aspect of our Lord’s Being and work which it would be 
impossible to emphasise too much. 


The Real Presence AAI 


So much will probably be generally admitted ; difficulty arises 
rather when we come to interpret these ideas in relation to the 
Eucharistic Gifts. Various terms have been used in Catholic 
theology to describe this relation. If what has been said in the 
preceding sections of this essay holds good, we are bound to say 
that the bread and wine are changed by consecration. “They 
acquire a new property, namely, that their devout reception secures 
and normally conditions participation in the blessings of Christ’s 
sacrifice, and therefore in His life. Regard being had to their 
sacrificial context, this is the natural meaning of the description of 
the consecrated elements, in relation to their consumption, as our 
Lord’s body and blood—His body given for us and His blood shed 
for us. Outwardly, we have bread and wine; the inward part 
and meaning of the sacrament is that these become in this sense 
the body and blood of our Lord, and as such are received by His 
people. ‘The act of reception requires appropriation by faith, if 
reception is to have its proper consequence and complete meaning ; 
but the opportunity for reception and appropriation Is afforded by 
the sacramental Gifts. The body and blood of our Lord are 
given after a spiritual and heavenly manner, not by any process 
separate from, and merely concomitant with, visible administra- 
tion, but because the bread and wine become in the above sense 
(without any connotation of materialism) His body and His blood. 
It is true that this occurs simply in and through their becoming 
effectual symbols, but wherever the significance of an effectual 
symbol is certain and considerable we naturally think of it in terms 
of that significance, as well as in terms of its natural properties. 
We do not carefully separate in thought the natural properties of 
a florin and its purchasing value ; rather, we combine the two, and 
we think of the florin, quite simply, asan object * which has certain 
natural properties and certain purchasing value. We tend to think 
of the latter as to all intents and purposes a property of the object ; 
yet it depends simply and solely on the fact that the object is an 
effectual symbol. The case for a similar view of the Eucharistic 
symbols is, of course, infinitely stronger. In the first place, the 
Eucharistic character of the elements turns more directly on the 


1 Here, and throughout the essay, the word object is used to connote a 
complex of persisting opportunities of experience which have a common 
situation in space. The properties of an object are the component oppor- 
tunities. Further analysis of “objects” is of course necessary from various 
points of view; the above definition appears adequate for the present purpose. 


442 The Eucharist 


connection between a certain act—to wit, devout reception—and 
certain results, and the basis of this connection is identical with 
the basis of those potential sequences between action and effect 
which constitute the natural properties of a visible thing. ‘The 
Eucharistic sequences and the natural sequences are both determined 
by the divine will. In and through consecration those complexes 
of opportunities of experience which we call bread and wine are 
changed, not by any change in the original opportunities of ex- 
perience, but by the addition of new opportunities of experience 
which are equally ultimate and have far greater significance. 
Such considerations justify the tendency to speak of the con- 
secrated elements as Host and Chalice, or as the Blessed Sacrament, 
or, using our Lord’s words, to describe them as His body and 
blood, not as asserting any material or quasi-material identity with 
His natural or glorified body and blood, but as asserting that they 
render Him appropriable as our sacrifice. Any Eucharistic theo- 
logy which does not begin by treating the words of institution as an 
immediate assertion of an identity tends also to use such phrases as 
the sacramental body and blood or the Eucharistic body and 
blood. Such phrases have a real value. They avoid much mis- 
understanding, and at the present day and in present circumstances 
they probably avoid more and more important misunderstandings 
than they create. On the other hand, they are in turn open to 
misunderstanding and to criticism which may be summed up in 
the incongruous phrase employed in this connection, that they 
teach a multi-corporal Christ. In the only sense in which we can 
still think of our Lord’s glorified body as identical with His 
natural body, we must, however, think of His sacramental body 
as identical with that body. ‘The identity between our Lord’s 
glorified body and his natural body must be held to consist in the 
facts that opportunities of experience which each includes, and 
normally conditions, are directly determined by that nature which 
our Lord assumed at His Incarnation ; and that in each case the 
whole complex of opportunities of experience exists as such in 
immediate dependence on that nature and affords immediately an 
expression of it. All this is, however, also the case in regard to | 
the Eucharistic body or blood. And the doctrine thus resulting 
admits of more than one philosophical expression. In the terms 
of a value-philosophy, the word “ Convaluation”?1 meets the 
1 Cf. W. Temple, Christus Veritas, pp. 247 ff. 


The Real Presence 443 


case 3 though it may be questioned whether “ T’ransvaluation ”’ 
would not do so even better. If the doctrine were translated into 
scholastic terms it would involve the assertion that the sub- 
stance of the Eucharistic body and blood is the substance of that 
body and that blood which our Lord assumed at His Incarnation ; 
and it isin this sense a doctrine of transubstantiation. But it 
is not such a doctrine of transubstantiation as is condemned 
in Anglican formularies, and is neither open to the objections 
nor presents the difficulties to which those testify. It does not 
overthrow the nature of a sacrament but is directly based on 
assigning to a sacrament that nature which Anglican formularies 
assign, and is deduced from the traditional Anglican view simply 
by insistence on the significance and implications of the facts that 
in the Eucharist we have primarily a symbolism of objects, and 
that the effectual symbolism of a sacrament is based on, and deter- 
mined by, the divine will.? 

It will be obvious that the views which have been advanced 
have an immediate bearing on the question of Eucharistic adoration. 
The danger of idolatry (in its narrower sense) lies in the identifi- 
cation ofa material object witha divine person. “The position with 
regard to images is exactly parallel to that with regard to pictures. 
They may legitimately afford a means for expressing as well as 


1 This is perhaps the most convenient point to notice an important criti- 
cism of the line of argument which is being employed. It is urged that this 
proves too much: that all that is claimed in regard to the Host or Chalice 
might be claimed in regard to unconsecrated bread or wine on the ground that 
these have the ‘“‘ property ”’ that they can be consecrated to become the Eucharistic 
body and blood, and that this “ property,” and either complex as including 
this “‘ property,” also depend on our Lord’s being and nature. When, how- 
ever, an opportunity of experience depends on a special capacity to utilise an 
object, which capacity is possessed only by certain persons, the opportunity of 
experience thus presented cannot be regarded as a property of the object, and is 
rightly referred to the capacity, not to the object. The possibility of the 
“Venus of Milo” or of Leonardo’s ‘‘ Last Supper ’’ was not a property of 
some piece of marble or of certain pigments, although dependent on these. So 
with the bread and wine. The opportunity which the unconsecrated bread 
and wine afford is not general, so that the same act by any person in the same 
(regenerate) order would normally have the same effect. It depends on a 
special power inherent in the priesthood, even although this power of the priest 
is, of course, merely the power of an ambassador, and what is involved in his 
making bread and wine effectual symbols depends not on his will but on the 
divine will. A further reply can also be made, in the judgment of the writers, 
by regard to immediacy of dependence and the nature of the “ property ” in 
question, but the above consideration appears adequate for the purpose, and is 
considerably simpler. 


444 The Eucharist 


stimulating feelings. Unless it is improper for a man to kiss the 
picture of one he loves, or place flowers before a picture of a dead 
wife, or for ardent politicians to decorate the statue of Lord 
Beaconsfield, it cannot be improper for the Catholic to place 
flowers or lights before the image of a Saint. Nor is this situation 
different when the image is an image of our Lord, and, in conse- 
quence, of a Person to whom adoration may be paid. But there 
must be no identification of the object with the person: these 
must consciously be held apart or idolatry results. In the case of 
the Sacrament the matter is different. On the view advanced we 
have objects which are a direct expression of our Lord’s being and 
nature 3 which exist in direct dependence on that being and nature 
as such an expression, and which enable us not only to participate 
in the blessings of His sacrifice but to be strengthened with His 
life, thus affording a relation to Him even more intimate than that 
which His natural body made possible. It is, of course, obvious 
that even such an object may not be worshipped in itself with that 
worship which may only be properly paid to a person. Even if 
our Lord were present in His glorified body, when we knelt 
before it in our worship of Him, we should not be giving to the 
Body in itself that worship which may be properly paid only to a 
divine person, but we should be so far identifying the object with 
the person that our worship of the person found expression in rela- 
tion to the object. If the Eucharistic body and blood are no less 
directly related to Him in that they are no less directly dependent 
on His being and nature, and if they mediate an even more intimate 
relation than did His natural body, a similar attitude is justified, 
and our Eucharistic adoration finds natural and proper expression 
in acts related to the Sacrament. 

It may be worth while, finally, to point out the bearing of 
these considerations on the devotional use of the Reserved Sacra- 
ment. It is desirable to emphasise that from the point of view 
here advanced the question whether our Lord is present and 
may be worshipped in the Reserved Sacrament, and the question 
whether Communion may be given by means of the Reserved 
Sacrament, are not two questions but one question. When it is 
asserted that our Lord is present in the Reserved Sacrament, it 
is not a question of asserting something additional to the fact that 
Communion may be given by the Reserved Sacrament. If the 
Reserved Sacrament is in fact capable of giving Communion 


Conclusion AAS 


precisely the arguments as to Eucharistic adoration which have 
already been advanced apply in the case of the Reserved Sacrament. 
Further, when this finds expression in devotional practices, what 
is involved is simply the transposition—in time, though not in 
thought, and for convenience though not in principle—of elements 
which are intrinsic parts of the Eucharistic rite. Thus, the 
devotional use of the Reserved Sacrament is not something inde- 
pendent of Communion and deriving from some separate con- 
ception. It is precisely because devout reception unites us to our 
Lord that the Reserved Sacrament is His body, that He is present 
in a special manner, and that He can be thus adored.} 


V 
CONCLUSION 


The foregoing argument will have suggested that the Eucharist 
is only very imperfectly described in the phrase, so often repeated, 
that it was given only for the purpose of Communion ; but it 
will also have been clear that the whole doctrine here advanced 
is at every point rooted in, and dependent on, the idea of Com- 
munion asan integral and culminating part of the rite. If we were 
to define the purpose of the sacrament, we probably could not do 
better than use the language of the Catechism, and say that it 
was instituted ‘‘ for the continual remembrance of the sacrifice 
of the death of Christ, and of the benefits which we receive 
thereby.” ‘This essay has been an attempt to draw out the mean- 
ing of that pregnant definition. It is, however, by no means the 
only statement in our formularies which appears to presuppose a 
Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist. The rubric with regard to 
reconsecration, for instance, would be unnecessary, if not super- 
stitious, if, instead of the symbolism of the rite being one primarily 
of objects rather me of action, the acts of individual adminis- 
tration were held to be directly sacramental. “The same view is 

1 The desirability of the devotional use of the Reserved Sacrament, and the 
forms which it should take, involve considerations outside the scope of this essay, 
since practical questions arise as to the risk of inadequate teaching with consequent 
superstition, and as to such an excess of these devotions as would destroy the 
proportion of the faith. It may, however, be fairly claimed that objections of 
these types hold against many other forms of devotion, and that experience in 


the case of these would appear to show that a remedy is better sought in regula- 
tion than in prohibition. 


446 The Eucharist 


suggested by the rubric as to the consumption of what remains of 
the consecrated elements ; while more broadly still, the whole 
structure of the English Communion Office—its requirement of 
priesthood in the celebrant, its detailed directions as to vesture and 
ceremony, its preparation of the worshipper by confession and 
absolution, and not least its truncated Consecration prayer with its 
abrupt emphasis on the words of institution—points to the 
symbolism of the rite being conceived as at once sacrificial and 
effectual. 

At the same time, the truth that the Eucharistic sacrifice finds 
its consummation in Communion is one which cannot be too 
strongly emphasised. ‘The principle is implicit in the universal 
fact that no Eucharist is ever celebrated without the priest at least 
communicating ; and it is an axiom of Catholic teaching that 
only by devout reception of the Sacrament can the individual 
worshipper appropriate its benefits. “There have been periods in 
the Church’s history, no doubt, when this side of the truth was 
forgotten ; and it may be admitted that one cause of this has some- 
times been an undue stringency of penitential or ceremonial dis- 
cipline. More serious, however, is a difficulty of an opposite kind, 
which must be faced before we close. It cannot be denied that 
to many minds the notion that the partaking of a sacrament should 
be “‘ generally necessary to salvation” is a great stumbling-block. 
To such minds the sacramental principle appears to involve a 
reaction from that pure and spiritual religion which Jesus Christ 
came to establish. “The issue is too large for adequate treatment 
here, and we must be content with no more than an outline. 
It will generally be found on examination that this difficulty 
involves an important underlying assumption—the assumption, 
namely, that our spiritual experience is, and should be, inde- 
pendent of and separable from our natural experience. But is 
that true? Is it not rather the case that spiritual experience, 
though of course it is more than natural experience, is yet so 
commonly intertwined with it as to stand to natural experience 
in the relation of whole to part? Certainly this is the case in 
our social relationships. An outstretched hand, for example, 
may be the expression of an offer of renewed friendship ; and in 
such a case the offer and its acceptance alike involve this expression 
as part of the whole experience. In certain circumstances a 
salute to the national flag is not something separable from our 


Conclusion 44.7 


loyalty, but is an integral part of such loyalty and of the experience 
which this involves. At every turn in our social life acts or 
opportunities of personal intercourse are ordinarily associated with 
some outward expression, suitable for its purpose but otherwise 
arbitrary ; and the facts would appear to suggest that a healthy 
emotional life requires such an expression in asubstantial measure. 
Within the special field of religious experience the same would 
appear to be the case. It is easy to say that an excess of sacramen- 
talism is harmful : it is difficult to deny the value of sacramental- 
ism as an element in religion. And sacramentalism found at once 
a fuller opportunity and a more adequate basis when God became 
incarnate. By His own acts on earth and through the Church as 
His mystical body it became possible in a new degree for the Word 
of God to give expression to opportunities and gifts of grace, and 
thus to utilise a method of intercourse which men had always 
employed in their personal relations with each other, and after 
which they had sought so earnestly, if often so mistakenly, in their 
relations with God. 

There will, of course, always be those whose thought and 
devotion will tend to lay especial stress upon the “ exemplarist ” 
aspects both of the Incarnation and of the cross, and to whom 
spiritual and moral progress will consist chiefly in the development 
of the understanding ; and it will usually be found in such cases 
that the appeal of the Eucharist is not strong. Yet even such 
people will probably admit that Christ’s example, in His life and in 
His death, is not the whole Christian Gospel, but that this involves 
an activity of God towards man and in man deriving from the 
historic and glorified Christ and continuous in the Church ever 
since. ‘That activity is what we mean by the word “ grace.” 
And what the Catholic belief in the Eucharist asserts is that this 
grace is normally given by means of the Sacrament, which when 
received in faith—and even for natural nourishment active assimila- 
tion is necessary—does in fact renew the believer’s union with 
God. It cannot be too often asserted that it is on the actuality 
and fruits of that union, and not any conscious feeling of it, that 
the emphasis is laid in Catholic teaching and practice. It would 
probably be true to say that “sensible devotion” at the time of 
Communion is the exception rather than the rule in the case of 
those who most regularly receive. But “we know whom we 
have believed,’’ and find in experience that God performs all that 


448 The Eucharist 


He promises in this rite, so far as our frail faith and feeble peni- 
tence allow. More thanthat we cannotask ; but less wedare not 
claim. 


NOTE 


The above Essay is based on an article on the Eucharistic Sacrifice 
in Theology (October, 1923); on a pamphlet by the late Mr. Arthur 
Boutwood (Hakluyt Egerton) and myself, 4 Cross Bench View of the 
Reservation Controversy, published by the Faith Press; on the Second 
Appendix to the Zrexicum of John Forbes by the editor of this volume; 
and on other material lavishly supplied by him. I am indebted to the 
publisher of the above article and pamphlet for permission to incorporate 
certain passages. . 


PNGB 


ABAILARD, 259%. 

Abbott, Dr. E. A., 2957. 

Adam, 26 

Aeschylus, 24 

Alexander III, Pope, 352 

Alexander, Prof., 130%”., 132 

Ambrose, St., 213, 278 

American Anthropologist, 13 

Andrewes, Lancelot, 363 

Anselm, 127, 263”., 277 

Apollinarius, 191 

Apuleius, 388 

Aquinas, St. Thomas, 47f., 63, 
148f., 233, 244, 302%., 372 

Archaeology, Journal of Egyptian, 17 

Aristotle, 22”., 24ff., 47ff., 63f., 
196 

Arius, Arianism, 185, 235 

Athanasius, St., 127, 139, 185, 250 

Augustine, St., 127, 139, 148ff., 
Dagrercastt., | 219, 227,238 ff.; 
2637., 300, 430 


BACON, 75 

Bacon, B. W., 154”. 

Barbarossa, 350 

Barnabas, Ep. of, 309”. 

Basil St. 139 

Batiffol, P., 159 

Beaconsfield, Lord, 443 

Becket, 350 

Bernard, St., 2407”. 

Bernardino of Siena, 335 

Bicknell, E. }., 206, 2417. 

Boethius, 149 

Bonaventura, St., 43f., 63, 70, 
244Nn. 

Boniface VIII., 351, 356 

Bosanquet, Prof., 657. 

Bothe, Bishop, 354”. 

Bousset, W., 154”., 165%”., 390%. 

Box, G. H., 384”. 

Breasted, 12f., 21%. 

Broad, G..D.,\33, 2937. 

Browning, R., 153, 181 

Bruce, Robert, 261 


Buddhism, 331 
Bultmann, 1637. 
Bunyan, 3007.* 
Burkitt, Prof., 1747. 
Burnet, 49 

Butler, 63, 66, 418 
Butler, F. W., 1307. 


CALVIN 127,210, 233 

Carlisle, Statute of, 3527. 
Carpenter, |, £7154 

Castle, The Interior, 3017. 
Catherine of Siena, 335 

Catholic Encyclopedia, 372n. 

Cato, 386 

Cave, Dr.; 194 

Chalcedon, Council of, r90f., 193 ff., 


404 
Charles V, 356 
Chase, F. H., 33807. 
Chopin, 74 
Cicero, 386 
Clarke, W. N., 229 
Cleanthes, 24, 26, 237 
Codrington, 9”. 
Coelestius, 232”. 
Constantine, 346, 387 
Couchoud, P. L., 1597”. 
Crawley, 396 
Croce, 132%. 
Cumont, 3887., 3937. 
Curtis, W. A., 234n. 
Cyprian, 213 


_Cyril of Alexandria, 192 


Cyril of Jerusalem, 395”. 


DANTE, 303, 356 
Darwin, 33 

Davenport, S. J., 195”. 
Dechelette, 107. 

De Groot, 147. 

De la Taille, Pére, 433 
De Morgan, II 7. 
Demosthenes, 388”. 
Denney, Dr., 275 


450 


Denzinger-Bannwart, 4147. 
Descartes, 132, 140 
Dibelius, M., 1637. 
Didache, The, 380, 432n. 
Diognetus, Ep. to, 240n. 
Dixon, 362”. 

Docetism, 106, 293%., 304 
Dominicans, 233 

Donne, John, 153 

Dort, Canons of, 233 
Drews, A., 159n. 

Du. Boses Dr.) 1357-:; 277 
Durkheim, 396 


EBIONITES, 201 

Edward III, 351, 352 

Edward VI, 358f. 

Egyptian religion, 11 ff. 

Eisler 21302 7. 

Elizabeth, Queen, 359f. 

Encyc.| Rel. and) Ethics, 13, 14, 
233%., 239N., 244n., 408N. 

Epicurus, 50 

Erasmus, 335 

Eschatology, 176ff., 188ff., 383f., 
401 ff. 

Essays and Reviews, 337 

Eucharist, the, 176, 
381 ff., 427 ff. 

Eugenius IV, Pope, 3542. 

Euripides, 24 

Eusebius, 379”. 

Evans, A., 157. 


S055 SLO; 


FARNELL, 22%., 388. 

Fielding, H., 154 

Foakes- Jackson, F. J., 154”. 

Folk-lore, Journal of American, 
16n., 23 

Forcellini, Lexicon, 277 

Formby, 2217. 

Francis, St., 77%., 302 

Frazer, Sir J.,.G.)°17,11597.; 396 

Frenssen, G., 154 

Freud, 217 


GARDINER, I7 

Gardner, A. H., 13f. 
Gardner, Prof. P., 400 
Gayford, C. S., 220 

Geol. Soc. Quarterly Journal, 5 
Glover, T. R., 154n., 389n. 
Gnosticism, 106, 196%”., 214 
Gompertz, Prof., 24 
Gore. 29 ear sis he ae 
Gosse, Philip, 33 f. 

Goudge, Prof., 298n7., 423 


Index 


Gratian, 353 

Greens Eotii.705 

Gregory the Great, Pope, 349, 428 
Gregory of Nyssa, 213, 215 


HADRIAN VI, Pope, 4147. 

Hamilton, 26”. 

Harnack, A., 85, 154”., 185, 227”., 
232n., 296, 389n. 

Harrison, J., 10, 389”. 

Heiler, F., 86, 1597., 384, 391 

Hellenic Studies, Journal of, 15n. 

Henry II, 349 

Henry V, 353 

Henry VIII, 350ff. 

Heraclitus, 25 

Herbert, George, 345 

Herrmann, W., 1857. 

Hewitt, 157. 

Hilary, 213 

Hinduism, 331 

Hocart, 9n., 19”. 

Holtzmann, H. J., 1547., 165”. 

Homer, 22:2),7245 220 

Hooker, R., 262n., 278 

Horace, 394 

Horus, 17f. 

Hoskyns, Sir E., 2957., 310n. 

Howitt, 2o0n. 

Hiigel, F. von, 8172). 12513077, 
240N. 

Hume, 52, 63, 235 

Hus, 335 


IGNATIUS, IQI, 231, 385 
Inge, W..R., 77%. 313 
Innocent Tif) 350/452 
Irenaeus, 2317”., 240”. 


Jackson, J. W., 7”. 
James, William, 239”. 
Jansen, 233 

Jastrow, 217. 

Jevons, F. B., 229n. 
Jewish Encyc., 409n. 
Joan of Arc, 300 

John, King, 350 

John of the Cross, St., 299 
Josephus, 409”. 

Julian of Norwich, 303 
Jiilicher, 1547., 167n. 
jung,.217 

Justinian, 346 

Justin Martyr, 385, 398 


KAFTAN, I81 
Kant, 63, 67, 235 


Index 


Keats, 74, 153 

Keith, Prof., 6 

Kelvin, Lord, 301 

Kempe, Archbishop, 354 
Kennedy, H. A. A., 3897. 
Kennedy, W. P. M., 359”. 
Klostermann, E., 154”. 
Knox, R. A., 313%”. 

Knox a1 b., 271.%.;:2981:;.432%. 
Koch, W., 414”. 
Koldeway, 14”. 


LAKE, Kirsopp, 154%”.,155”., 288n., 
297, 380%., 414N., 423 

Lang, A., 20”. 

Laud, Archbishop, 345, 363 

Leo sPope, Tor 

Lloyd, C., 376%”. 

Lodge, Sir Oliver, 222 

Loisy, A., 154”., 159%., 166, 293%., 
384n., 389n. 

Lollards, 348, 360 

Loofs, 184, 232”. 

Luther, 216, 233f., 2547. 

Lux Mundi, v. 

Lyndwood, 353 


MACALISTER, Prof., 5, 8 

McGiffert, A. C., 2717. 

Mackintosh, H. R., roof. 

McNeile, Dr., 2897. 

McTaggart, Dr., 239”. 

Maitland, 353%”. 

Manichaeans, 214, 421 

Marett, 8, 229”. 

Marcion, 127 

Martin V, Pope, 354 

Mary, Queen, 359 

Mayew, Bishop, 354”. 

Melton, Archbishop, 351%”. 

Meyer, Eduard, 2847., 292%., 296, 
420 

Meyerson, F., 53 

Mal) ye Ss 53 

Moberly, Dr., 191, 253, 276f. 

Modernism, 116 

Modernism, Catholic, 158 f. 

Mohammedanism, 331 

Mommsen, 404 

Montefiore, C., 154, 164n”., 166%., 
167N., 310Nn. 

Morgan, C. LI., 130”. 

Mozley, J. K., 263”. 

Murray, Prof. Gilbert, 3877. 


NEANDERTHAL Mav, 4f. 
Neoplatonism, 149 


451 


Newman, 38 

New Realists, 1327. 
Newton, 37 

Nicaea, 404 

Nicholas I, Pope, 4147. 
Nietzsche, 324 


OBERMAIER, 5%. 

Oldcastle, Sir John, 348 

Oman, John, 243 

Orange, Synod of, 215, 232 

OTigengisG, is, 2227251 

Origin of Species, 337 

Otel anaes 

Otho, 353 

Otley - D1. 2977 

Otto Dri. Sin 237 fae aay 
228n. 

Ottobon, 353 

Oviedo, 137. 


PAPACY 7031.7 )4108,ia0112 eel Owe 
347 ff. 
Papias, 379 


Paris, Matthew, 350”. 

ParkyR iA. eit. 

Pascal, 303 

Pecok, Reginald, 348 

Pelagius, Pelagianism, 213f., 225, 
Zar t, 

Perry, W. J., 197. 

Petey, Gospel of, 294n. 

Petrie, Sir Flinders, I1v., 17u. 

Piepenbring, 1547”. 

Pindar, 24 

Plato; 25,157, 03,:07 

Poincaré, Henri, 301, 305”. 

Rolycarp, St,412 

Posidonius of Apamea, 239”., 380 

Pringle-Pattison, A. S., 45”. 

Propitiation, 270, 435 

Protestantism, 118 f., 216, 340, 369f. 

Provisors, Statutes of, 354 

Pirlier Hos Weses 75 

Pumpelly, R., 11%. 


QUAKERS, 377, 421, 428 
Quibell, 18%. 


RADIN, 237”. 

Radulphus Ardens, 277 

Ramsay, Sir W., 388 

Rashdall, H., 250, 251 ff., 274 ff. 
Rawlinson, A. E. J., 96%., 3697. 
Reid lA t30 7 

Reinhardt, 386”. 


sn 


4.52 


Reitzenstein, R., 86, 154”., 392n. 
Relativity, theory of, 37f. 
Resurrection, 259ff., 279 ff. 
Revelation, 86ff., 130 ff. 

Richard of St. Victor, 299 
Richard IT, 348, 352 

Ritsenl, 133)235 

Rivers, W. H. R., 396”. 

Riviére, M., 2657., 277 
Robertson, A. T., 201 

Robinson, Dr. Armitage, 166n., 230 
Roessingh, I60n. 

Ross, W. D., 49”. 

Royce, 141”. 


SABATIER, A., 159%. 

Sabellius, 149 

Sacrament, Reserved, 444f. 

Savonarola, 335 

sayvce, ANH. 147, 

Schiller, Dr., 437. 

Schmidt, 1637. 

Schmiedel, E. B., 295., 296 

Schweitzer, A., 155”., 183, 403 

scott, B, F., 154”., 159”. 

Scotus, Duns, 244 

Selwyn, E. G., 236 

Simpson, J. Y., 1427. 

Skipton, H. K., 300m. 

Smith, Elliot, 6”., Io, 11, 7s 

Smith, W. R., 21. 

Socinianism, 234 

Sollas, 7. 

Soloviev, 817., 3147. 

Sophocles, 24, 397 

Sorley, Prof., 457. 

Sparrow-Simpson, Dr., 3157. 

Spencer, Herbert, 65 

Spitta, 310%”. 

Stanton, V. H., 1597. 

Stevenson, R..L., 40 

Stoics, 24 ff., 237%. 

Storr, Canon, 259”., 264n., 275 ff. 

Streeter,Canon B. H., 289n., 202”. 
293, 301n., 308n. 

Stubbs, Bishop, 3497. 

Sundar Singh, Sadhu, 302 

Swete, Dr., 1727. 


, 


TATIAN, 382 

Taylor, Prof. A. E., 43n., 49N., 
81%., 140M., 237, 239”., 244n., 
314n. 

Tell-el-Amarna, 21 


Index 


Temple, Bishop W., 71, I30Nn; 
I40n., 146n., 193, 196, 442n. 

Tennant, Dr., 147n., 218f. 

Tertullian, 139, 148, 153, 
411N., 415 

Thales, 22 

Theodoret, 429 

Lheol. Studies, Journal of, 166n., 
243, 277 

Theresa, St., 299, 300, 305. 

Thomas a Kempis, 335 

Townsend, 2307. 

Tradition, 99 

Trent, Council of, 216, 233, 360, 375 

Tutankhamen, 21 

Tylor, Sir E. B., 4 

Tyrrell, George, 92, 159n. 


273m 


UNDERHILL, Miss E., 230n., 299. 
Usener, H., 395n. 


VAN DER BERG VAN 
G. A., 159”. 
Vanderlaan, E. C., 160n. 
Vatican Council, 32, 117 
Vincent of Lerins, 215 
Vincentian Canon, 374f. 


EYSINGA, 


WAD®B, Dr.) 310 1 3rsen 
Walker, J. R., 20n. 

Ward, James, 45n., 8117., 239 
Waugh, W. T., 351. 
Webb, C. C. J., 67, 140m. 
Weigall, 21 2. 

Wellhausen, 154%. 

Weiss, Joh., 155”., 167”., 404 
Wesleys, the, 335, 364 
Wessel, 335 

Westcott, Bishop, 278 
Weston, Bishop, 193 
White, Dr., 276 

Whitgift, 345, 363 

William the Conqueror, 349 
Williams, N. P., 412”. 
Wilson, Canon, 276 
Witgenstein, 58. 

Wood, H. G., 185. 
Wordsworth, 79. 

Wrede, W., 1547. 

Wycliffe, 335, 348 


XENOPHANES, 24 ff. 


ZAHN, Th., 159”. 


Printed in England at Tue BALLANTYNE PRESS 


SPOTTISWOODE, BALLANTYNE & Co. Lp. 
Colchester, London & Eton 


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